THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


/'    ' 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

THIS  volume  is  intended  to  mark  in  some 
degree  its  authors'  sense  of  Professor  James's 
memorable  services  in  philosophy  and  psychology, 
the  vitality  he  has  added  to  those  studies,  and 
the  encouragement  that  has  flowed  from  him  to 
colleagues  without  number.  Early  in  1907,  at  the 
invitation  of  Columbia  University,  he  delivered  a 
course  of  lectures  there,  and  met  the  members  of 
the  philosophical  and  psychological  Departments 
on  several  occasions  for  social  discussion.  They 
have  an  added  motive  for  the  present  work  in  the 
recollections  of  this  visit. 

Columbia  University, 
March,  1908. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

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ESSAYS   PHILOSOPHICAL    AND 
PSYCHOLOGICAL 


CONTENTS 


PHILOSOPHICAL  ESSAYS 

Page 
1.     THE  NEW  REALISM 1 

By  George  Stuart  Fullerton. 

II.    DOES    REALITY  POSSESS    PRACTICAL  CHARAC- 
TER?      51 

By  John  Dewey. 

III.  A  FACTOR  IN  THE  GENESIS  OF  IDEALISxM    .     .      81 

By  Wendell  T.  Bush. 

IV.  CONSCIOUSNESS  A  FORM   OF  ENERGY    ....     10.3 

By  Wm.  Pepperrell  Montague. 

V.     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 135 

By  Frederick  J.  E.  Woodbridge. 

VI.     SUBSTITUTIONALISM 1G7 

By  C.  A.  Strong. 

VII.     WORLD-PICTURES 193 

By  Walter  Boughton   Pitkin. 

VIII.     NAIVE   REALISM  ;  WHAT  IS  IT  ? 231 

By  Dickinson  S.  Miller. 

IX.  KANT  AND  THE  ENGLISH   PLATONISTS  .     .     .     .     263 

By  Arthur  O.  Lovejoy. 

X.  A  CRITIQUE  OF  KANT'S  ETHICS 303 

By  Felix  Adler. 

XI.     THE  ABUSE  OF  ABSTRACTION    IN  ETHICS      .     .     367 

By  Herbert  Gardinki:  Lord. 

XII.     PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY,  THE  OUTLINE  OF  A 

CLASSIFICATION   OF  VALUES 395 

By  G.  A.  Tawney. 

XIII.    THE    PROBLEM   OF  METHOD   IN  MATHEMATICS 

AND  PHILOSOPHY 425 

By  Harold  Chaiman  Brown. 


viii  CONTENTS 

PSYCHOLOGICAL   ESSAYS 

Page 

I.     PRAGMATISM   IN  ^ESTHETICS 459 

By  Kate  Gordon. 

II.     THE  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF   RELATION 483 

By  R.  S.  WooDWORTH. 

III.  ON  THE  VARIABILITY  OF    INDIVIDUAL   JUDG- 

MENT     509 

By  Frederic  Lyman  Wells. 

IV.  THE  VALIDITY  OF  JUDGMENTS  OF  CHARACTER    551 

By  Naomi  Norsworthy. 

V.     REACTIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS 569 

By  James  McKeen  Cattell. 

VI.    A  PRAGMATIC  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE  WILL   .    585 
By  Edward  L.  Thorndike. 

Note.  With  the  gi'oup  of  contributors,  members  of  the 
Department  of  Philosophy  and  of  Psychology  early  in  1907, 
is  associated  another  who  Joined  the  former  Department 
subsequently.  Three  of  them  have  since  7vithdratvn  from 
Columbia   University,  two  to  other  institutions. 


THE    NEW    REALISM 


ESSAYS    PHILOSOPHICAL 
AND    PSYCHOLOGICAL 


THE  NEW  REALISM 

By  George  Stuart  Fullerton 

I  BEG  that  it  may  be  understood  that  no 
question- begging  is  intended  in  my  title.  A 
philosophical  doctrine  is  not  necessarily  worthy 
of  acceptance  because  it  is  new.  It  is  foolish 
to  argue  that,  because  a  philosophy  happens  to 
be  the  current  one,  it  is  deserving  of  respect;  just 
as  it  is  foolish  to  argue  that,  because  certain 
beliefs  are  discovered  to  have  an  affinity  with  the 
beliefs  current  in  some  by-gone  age,  therefore 
they  must  be  antiquated  and  worthy  of  rejection. 
There  is  no  philosophy  accepted  in  our  time  which 
has  not  its  roots  in  the  past,  and  we  may  always 
obtain  a  cheap  triumph  over  its  adherents  by  taunt- 
ing them  with  the  date  at  which  their  ancestors 
thought  that  they  saw  the  light.  But  this  is  a 
cheap  triumph,  indeed,  and  one  which  we  may 
all  enjoy  in  our  turn.  Only  he  whose  reading  and 
reflection  have  been  limited  will  look  upon  it  as 
worth  enjoying. 

There  are  indications  that  a  number  of  thinkers 
at  the  present  time  are  turning  their  attention  to 


4  THE  NEW  REALISM 

some  form  of  realism  —  that  they  have  weighed 
idealism  in  the  balance  and  have  found  it  wanting. 
The  tendency  is,  I  believe,  a  growing  one,  and  a 
number  of  the  leaders  of  philosophic  thought  have 
been  drawn  into  the  current.  This  is,  in  itself,  no 
reason  for  assuming  that  realism  is  true.  In  phi- 
losophy it  is  not  the  same  thing  to  be  in  the  right 
and  to  be  in  the  fashion,  as  I  have  said  above. 

Nevertheless,  the  fact  seems  to  make  a  discussion 
of  the  comparative  merits  of  idealism  and  realism 
the  more  opportune  and  the  more  likely  to  be  of 
general  interest.  And  it  sets  one  to  thinking  anew 
of  the  great  role  which  realism  has  played  in  the 
past.  Not  realism  in  the  mediaeval  sense  of  the 
word,  but  realism  as  the  modern  man  understands 
it;  the  realism  which  accepts  an  external  physical 
world  distinct  from  anyone's  ideas,  the  realism 
which  is  in  sympathy  with  the  thought  of  the  mass 
of  mankind,  the  realism  which  has  always  been 
tacitly  accepted,  I  think,  by  science,  ever  since 
there  was  such  a  thing  as  science.  We  are  apt  to 
forget  that  for  very  many  centuries  the  world  was 
realistic  in  its  thinking,  even  those  whom  we  some- 
times refer  to  as  idealistic  philosophers  having  little 
in  common  with  those  whom  we  now  call  idealists 
—  with  the  men  who  maintain  that  there  is  no  ex- 
istence save  psychic  existence,  and  who  resolve 
"  things  "  into  the  perceptions  or  ideas  of  some  mind. 

To  this  new  fashion  in  thinking  it  was  Descartes 
who  led  the  way,  without  seeing  what  lay  at  the 


GEORGE  STUART  FULLERTON        5 

end  of  his  path.  He  reasoned  much  as  men  do 
now  about  the  function  of  the  bodily  senses  in 
bringing  us  to  a  knowledge  of  things ;  he  shut  the 
mind  up  to  ideas  for  all  its  immediate  knowledge, 
and  made  ideas  merely  representative  of  things  not 
themselves  directly  perceived;  he  thus  placed  the 
world  at  one  remove,  and,  for  his  successors,  lost 
the  world.  Not  at  once,  for  old  habits  of  thought 
persisted,  in  spite  of  logic.  A  world  was  assumed, 
even  when  every  connection  was  cut  between  it  and 
the  knowing  mind.  But  it  is  hard  to  go  on  believing 
in  things  when  there  is  clearly  no  reason  at  all  for 
so  doing.  Descartes  was  the  logical  forerunner  of 
Berkeley;  and  in  the  fulness  of  time  the  latter 
appeared,  and  in  his  train  the  whole  tribe  of  those 
to  whom  that  self-assertive,  that  persistent,  that 
seemingly  not  to  be  ignored  fact,  the  physical  world, 
became  sublimated  into  a  mental  thing,  or  a  semi- 
mental  thing,  or,  at  any  rate,  a  thing  unlike  what 
mankind  had  supposed  it  to  be  before  the  advent 
of  the  new  doctrine. 

Yet  the  defection  from  the  old  doctrine  was  not, 
even  when  the  new  one  was  at  the  height  of  its 
popularity,  by  any  means  universal.  Those  who 
have  held  to  the  pre- Cartesian  philosophy,  and 
they  have  been  many,  have  never  bowed  down  at 
the  new  shrine.  Doubtless  many  of  them  have 
kept  true  to  their  first  love  out  of  sheer  inertia,  as 
does  the  traditional  Hollander,  despising  the  fickle 
Italian  for  his  love  of  change.    But  to  others  we  may 


6  THE  NEW  REALISM 

attribute  higher  motives.  And  from  other  quarters 
protests  have  been  raised,  notably  from  the  Scottish 
philosophers,  men  of  robust  good  sense,  but  not 
always  metaphysicians,  and  sometimes  incapable 
of  seeing  what  the  acute  idealist  may  say  in  his  own 
justification.  Moreover,  in  quiet  corners,  espe- 
cially in  England  and  in  America,  men  not  directly 
influenced  by  Scholasticism  have  quietly  gone  on 
teaching  a  realistic  doctrine  in  spite  of  what 
seemed  the  dominant  note  in  the  philosophy  of 
the  time.  Furthermore,  the  man  who  was  not  a 
philosopher,  whether  he  happened  to  belong  among 
the  learned  or  the  unlearned,  always  believed,  as 
hinted  above,  in  an  external  world  other  than  the 
world  of  ideas,  and  in  his  blundering  way  con- 
demned the  ideahst.  With  him  has  stood  the  man 
of  science,  who,  whatever  he  may  have  said  when 
he  attempted  to  philosophize,  consistently  has 
treated  physical  phenomena  in  one  way  and 
mental  phenomena  in  another.  This  is  a  significant 
distinction,  and  one  not  to  be  conjured  out  of 
existence  by  a  mere  distribution  of  titles,  by  vaguely 
marked  distinctions  drawn  between  philosophy 
and  science,  or  by  the  obscurity  induced  by  the 
cumbersome  and  highly  technical  set  of  phrases, 
to  my  mind  of  doubtful  importance,  which  the 
idealists  from  and  including  Kant  have  seen  fit 
to  call  into  being. 

The  pendulum  now  shows  unmistakable  signs  of 
swinging  toward  realism.     It  ought  to  be  under- 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON        7 

stood  that  tliis  is  not  an  aberration  —  a  phenom- 
enon to  be  regarded  with  concern.  It  is  swinging 
in  the  direction  of  the  spontaneous  thought  of 
mankind,  of  the  beHef  of  the  ages.  Man  is  natu- 
rally a  realist,  though  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that 
the  uninstructed  man  is  a  rather  stupid  realist. 
To  make  of  him  a  reflective  and  reasonable  realist, 
some  natural  ability  on  his  part  is  prerequisite,  as 
is  also  some  labor  on  the  part  of  his  instructor. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  requires  no  little  effort 
to  turn  men  into  idealists.  The  doctrine  is  by  no 
means  so  satisfactory  or  so  self-evident  as  it  seems 
to  be  to  those  who  have  become  thoroughly  in- 
doctrinated, to  whom  certain  words  and  phrases 
have  grown  to  be  the  most  natural  expression  of 
their  thought  and  in  need  of  no  analysis,  who  are 
habituated  to  an  uncomfortable  chair,  and  who  no 
longer  find  it  uncomfortable. 

But  let  them  think  themselves  back  to  the  time 
of  their  first  introduction  to  philosophy.  Did 
idealism  seem  natural  and  reasonable  then  ?  Even 
the  glamour  cast  by  the  name  —  a  glamour  which 
has  had  much  to  do,  I  think,  with  the  popularity 
of  the  doctrine,  can  scarcely  reconcile  a  beginner 
to  what  seems  so  little  in  harmony  with  good 
sense  and  common  experience.  In  so  far  as  any 
system  of  reflective  thought  can  be  called  natural, 
it  is  realism  that  is  natural,  not  idealism. 

It  may  be  said  that,  in  touching  upon  certain 
of  the  facts  brought  forward  above,  I  am  employ- 


8  THE  NEW  REALISM 

ing  something  like  an  argumentum  ad  populum. 
I  hope  it  will  be  understood  that,  in  so  far  as  I  do 
this,  I  address  only  those  who  make  use  of  a 
similar  argument  in  favor  of  idealism.  This  was 
shamelessly  done  by  that  lovable  creature  Berkeley, 
and  it  has  been  done  repeatedly  since.  Idealism 
has  been  confused  with  what  is  ideal,  and  the  appeal 
has  been  to  the  emotions  and  aspirations  of  men  — 
an  appeal  made,  of  course,  in  good  faith,  but  a 
mistaken  appeal,  for  there  are  all  sorts  of  idealism 
and  all  sorts  of  realism,  and  either  form  of  doctrine 
may  be  inspiring  or  the  reverse.  After  all,  for  the 
philosopher,  qua  philosopher,  the  question  is : 
What  is  the  truest  account  that  reflective  thought 
can  give  of  the  world  in  which  we  find  ourselves  ? 
Whether  this  world  is  one  that  pleases  us  or  does 
not  please  us  is  a  thing  to  discuss  after  we  have 
found  out  what  it  really  is. 

In  what  follows,  I  shall  not  rest  my  case  upon 
an  appeal  to  the  authority  of  great  names,  whether 
of  the  dead  or  of  the  living.  Nor  shall  I  try  to 
show  that  realism  is  a  doctrine  that  ought  to  attract 
the  pious  man  or  the  canny  fellow  who  wants  to 
be  on  the  safe  side.  I  shall  not  talk  of  the  fashions, 
nor  be  contemptuous  of  those  whose  sleeves  have 
not  the  latest  cut.  I  wish  to  discuss  the  subject 
on  its  own  merits :  Why  should  a  man,  influenced 
by  none  other  than  intellectual  considerations, 
become  a  realist,  and  what  sort  of  a  realist  should 
he  become? 


GEORGE  STUART  FULLERTON        9 

And,  in  pursuance  of  this  aim,  I  shall,  first, 
bring  forward  what  seem  to  me  the  deficiencies  of 
idealism  as  a  philosophical  doctrine;  then,  I  shall 
try  to  show  how  it  happens  that  men  of  acute 
mind  have  been,  and  are,  misled  into  embracing 
it ;  finally,  I  shall  endeavor  to  indicate  what  ought 
to  be  recognized  by  the  man  who,  in  our  day,  would 
be  a  realist.  This  means,  to  my  mind,  that  he 
must  not  be  forgetful  of  his  debt  to  the  idealists, 
men  who  have  seen  a  certain  truth,  even  if  they 
have  somewhat  misconceived  it.  The  limits  of 
this  paper  compel  me  to  brevity,  but  such  a  resume 
as  is  here  possible  may  not  be  without  its  usefulness. 


The  Deficiencies  of  Idealism 

It  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  without  signifi- 
cance that  men  generally  find  themselves  com- 
pelled to  distinguish  constantly  between  ideas  and 
"things,"  and  to  mark  the  distinction  by  using 
different  expressions  when  they  are  referring  to  the 
one  or  to  the  other.  Every  man  would  regard  it  as 
absurd  to  talk  of  a  dream  image  confined  within 
the  walls  of  a  real  material  bottle,  of  an  imagined 
knife  lying  upon  a  real  table,  of  his  neighbor's 
percept  —  assuming  him  to  know  what  is  meant 
by  the  word  percept  —  transfixed  and  held  up  to 
view  on  the  point  of  a  fork. 

Nor  would  he  find  these  forms  of  expression 


10  THE  NEW  REALISM 

repellent  merely  because  they  are  unusual.  The 
objection  to  them  is  that  they  stand  for  ways  of 
treating  certain  things  in  his  experience  which  he, 
in  actual  practice,  repudiates.  However  dim  his 
distinction  between  the  mental  and  the  material, 
however  incapable  he  may  be  of  accurately  defin- 
ing things,  he  has  all  his  life  distinguished  between 
the  physical  and  the  mental,  and  the  expressions 
which  he  spontaneously  uses  fairly  represent  this 
universal  and  apparently  unavoidable  distinction. 

And  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  without  significance 
that  this  distinction  is  just  as  unmistakably  rec- 
ognized by  science.  There  are  certain  sciences 
which  describe  things  in  space  and  in  time  without 
making  the  least  reference  to  the  mental.  It  might 
be  claimed  by  the  superficial  observer  that  they 
take  no  note  of  the  distinction.  But  let  anyone 
pass  for  a  moment  from  the  physical  to  the 
psychical,  and  unwarrantably  introduce  into  the 
material  world  what  properly  belongs  to  a  different 
sphere,  and  the  scientist  would  be  up  in  arms  at 
once.  His  real  metre  is  not  what  seems  a  metre 
to  this  man  or  to  that;  his  real  half-hour  is  not 
the  interminable  time  which  seems  to  have  elapsed 
while  the  weary  listener  waited  for  a  tiresome 
paper  to  be  read  to  its  close.  He  wants  no  sub- 
jective ghosts  let  loose  in  his  world  of  objective 
realities,  and  when  he  suspects  the  presence  of 
such,  he  is  restive  in  the  extreme. 

It  may  be  the  direct  aim  of  a  science  to  busy 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      11 

itself  only  with  changes  in  the  external  world, 
and  yet  it  may  be  compelled  incidentally  to  rec- 
ognize mental  phenomena.  Thus,  in  astronomy, 
we  take  into  consideration  the  personal  equation, 
consciously  distinguishing  between  an  occurrence 
in  the  outer  world  and  the  perception  of  that  oc- 
currence. On  the  other  hand  one  science,  psy- 
chology, deliberately  aims  to  describe  what  is 
carefully  distinguished  from  the  physical ;  and  the 
kindred  disciplines  of  ethics  and  sociology  base 
themselves  upon  similar  ground.  Imagine  the 
feelings  of  the  psychologist  who  would  be  asked 
to  treat  the  mental  phenomena,  with  which  he 
occupies  himself,  precisely  as  he  and  others  are 
ready  to  treat  physical  phenomena !  Neither  in 
the  laboratory  nor  out  of  it  would  he  have  tlie 
faintest  idea  how  to  undertake  such  a  task. 

Thus,  he  who  declares  all  phenomena  to  be 
mental  repudiates  the  actual  knowledge  of  the 
world  wdiich  both  the  unlearned  and  the  learned 
seem  to  have.  He  repudiates  a  distinction  which 
is  imbedded  in  the  very  structure  of  human  ex- 
perience. He  would  introduce  confusion  into  the 
sciences,  if  the  sciences  paid  any  attention  to  him, 
which  they  do  not.  Science  quietly  goes  its  own 
way  and  gives  an  account  of  the  world  of  matter 
and  mind  as  it  is  revealed  to  us,  or  as  it  is  guessed 
at  from  indications  which  are  revealed.  The  man 
of  science  who  also  chooses  to  be  an  idealistic 
philosopher  is  compelled,  as  we  may  see  if  we  will 


12  THE  NEW  REALISM 

but  watch  him  at  his  work,  to  keep  his  science 
upon  one  dish  and  his  philosophy  upon  another. 
The  latter  does  not  grow  out  of  the  former,  and 
it  does  not  conduce  to  a  better  understanding  of 
the  former.  It  is  irreconcilable  with  it,  and  must 
be  kept  apart.  This  appears  to  have  been  realized 
with  some  clearness  by  those  idealists  who  have 
maintained  that  the  realities  of  science  are,  after 
all,  but  unreal  appearances,  fitted  to  command 
the  respect  of  those  only  who  have  not  yet  at- 
tained to  the  beatific  vision  reserved  for  the  eye 
of  the  philosopher. 

I  do  not  ask  anyone  to  accept  a  non-mental, 
material  world  merely  on  the  ground  that  such  a 
world  is  accepted  unhesitatingly  both  in  common 
thought  and  in  science.  Nevertheless,  I  must  con- 
fess that  I  think  that  he  is  a  courageous  man,  an 
unduly  courageous  man,  who  hastily  throws  it 
over,  merely  because  he  is  perplexed  to  know  how 
to  give  a  good  account  of  it.  And  when  one  re- 
flects that  it  has  been  denied,  after  all,  by  a  mere 
handful  of  men,  men  brought  up  in  and  inoculated 
with  the  same  tradition,  men  some  of  whom  have 
been  betrayed  into  extravagances  with  which  even 
their  confreres  could  feel  little  sympathy,  and, 
moreover,  men  struggling  with  the  difficulties  of 
reflective  thought,  working  in  a  region  in  which 
all  results  ought  to  be  held  tentatively  and  with 
some  diffidence  —  when  one  reflects  upon  all  this, 
the  denial  seems  the  more  rash.     Of  course,  the 


GEORGE  STUART  FULLERTON      13 

few  may,  on  general  principles,  be  admitted  to 
be  possibly  in  the  right ;  but  the  assertion  that  they 
are  in  the  right  ought  to  be  made,  if  at  all,  with  a 
good  deal  of  caution.  I  hardly  think  it  can  be 
called  an  appeal  to  autliority  to  ask  that  one  bear 
this  warning  in  mind,  when  one  is  brought  face 
to  face  with  what  seems  to  be  a  rather  startling 
philosophical  doctrine. 

But,  to  come  directly  to  the  question  itself,  what 
can  be  said  against  idealism  ?  what  are  the  short- 
comings of  the  doctrine  ? 

In  answering  this  question,  I  think  we  should 
begin  by  pointing  out  that  we  do  not  find  ourselves 
in  a  chaos  of  experiences.  We  seem  to  be  in  an 
orderly  world,  in  which  the  succession  of  phenom- 
ena is  such  that  it  does  not  appear  to  be  absurd 
to  speak  of  "the  laws  of  nature."  We  recognize 
phenomena  as  distributed  in  space  and  in  time; 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  history. 

It  is  not  nonsense  to  ask  where  something  hap- 
pened, and  when  it  happened.  We  turn  to  a  sys- 
tem, an  order,  and  it  is  evidently  not  an  arbitrarily 
constructed  system;  we  try  to  find  the  place  and 
the  time  of  some  occurrence  in  question.  Any 
place  and  any  time  will  not  do;  sometimes  we 
discover  that  we  have  been  mistaken,  and  then 
we  make  a  correction. 

Now,  it  is  not  every  succession  of  experiences 
which  we  have  that  we  call,  or  have  a  right  to  call, 
a  series  of  phenomena  in  that  order  by  means  of 


14  THE  NEW  REALISM 

which  we  date  occurrences,  or  fix  the  positions, 
distances,  and  magnitudes  of  things.  We  can  and 
do  distinguish  perfectly  well  between  subjective 
changes  and  objective  changes. 

It  may  be  said  that  Berkeley,  the  idealist,  rec- 
ognized in  his  fashion  this  same  distinction,  and 
expressly  referred  to  the  laws  of  nature,  describ- 
ing them  as  the  orderly  ways  in  which  a  Divine 
Spirit  arouses  ideas  in  us.  But  is  this  account  of 
the  matter  adequate  ?  Does  it  properly  mark  the 
distinction  between  the  subjective  and  the  objec- 
tive ?  It  is  true  that  we  may  have  a  direct  expe- 
rience of  objective  changes.  We  may,  with  the  re- 
lation of  our  sense-organs  to  the  object  unchanged, 
observe  changes  taking  place  in  things  —  we  may 
watch  the  swelling  of  a  soap-bubble  or  note  the 
motion  of  the  second-hand  of  a  watch  —  but  the 
matter  is  not  always  so  simple.  We  are  constantly 
changing  the  position  of  our  body  with  regard  to 
things ;  we  open  and  shut  our  eyes,  thus  having 
experience  of  things  and  losing  it  altogether.  And, 
from  a  long  experience,  we  have  all,  whether  ideal- 
ists or  realists  or  not  philosophers  at  all,  learned 
to  distinguish  between  mere  changes  in  sensations 
and  changes  in  things,  between  the  subjective  and 
the  objective.  Often  the  distinction  is  one  suffi- 
ciently easy  to  draw ;  sometimes  we  may  be  puzzled 
to  know  what  the  objective  order  really  is.  But 
in  no  case  is  it  a  fair  statement  of  the  matter  to 
suggest   that  the  objective  order  is  simply  spread 


GEORGE  STUART  FULLERTON      15 

out  before  our  gaze,  and  taken  up  by  us  without 
the  labor  of  discrimination  and  selection.  We 
are  compelled  to  find  out  what  it  is  as  a  whole ; 
comparatively  little  is  given  us  directly. 

It  is  to  a  knowledge  of  this  order  of  phenomena 
that  physical  science  endeavors  to  attain.  It  is 
position  in  this  order  that  we  try"  to  determine  when 
we  ask  regarding  the  place  and  time  of  anything. 
All  our  measurements  come  back  to  this.  When 
we  ask  how  big  an  object  is,  we  do  not  mean  to 
determine  how  big  it  looks  to  this  man  or  that, 
under  these  circumstances  or  under  those.  We 
refer  to  its  size  relatively  to  other  things  in  the 
physical  order.  And  when  we  ask  when  some- 
thing happened,  we  always  refer  to  this  same  order. 
How  shall  we  measure  the  time  which  has  elapsed 
since  Columbus  discovered  America  ?  by  physi- 
cal changes ;  by  revolutions  of  the  sun.  How 
shall  I  measure  the  time  which  has  elapsed  since 
I  sat  down  at  this  desk  to  wTite  ?  by  looking  at 
the  clock  before  me.  In  certain  cases  we  may  be 
reduced  to  the  poor  expedient  of  falling  back  upon 
subjective  time  —  we  may  be  forced  to  guess  how 
long  a  time  has  elapsed  by  estimating  how  long 
the  time  has  seemed.  But  even  here  our  ultimate 
reference  is  to  the  objective  standard.  We  have 
had  experience  of  the  fact  that  such  seemings  may 
indicate  with  approximate  correctness  the  hours 
and  half  hours  marked  by  the  clock.  It  is  because 
of  this  that  our  makeshift  is  of  anv  service. 


16  THE  NEW  REALISM 

Our  ultimate  standard  of  reference  is,  then,  to 
the  physical  world-order;  an  order  of  experience, 
but  one  not  to  be  confounded  with  what  is  sub- 
jective. Our  where  and  our  when,  our  how  great 
and  our  how  small,  our  before  and  our  after,  our 
together  and  our  apart,  all  come  back  to  this. 
This  is  the  very  vertebral  column  of  the  organism 
of  experience.  It  serves  to  order  all  phenomena. 
Reflection  makes  it  evident  that  we  make  use  of 
it  in  the  ordering  of  mental  phenomena  as  well 
as  in  the  ordering  of  physical 

We  do  not  hesitate  to  speak  of  mental  phenom- 
ena as  coming  into  existence  at  this  definite  time 
or  at  that.  We  never  think  of  anyone  as  having 
a  thought  at  no  time  and  in  no  definite  relation 
to  the  rest  of  the  system  of  things.  When  did 
Caesar's  body  cross  the  Rubicon.^  We  measure 
the  time  which  elapsed  between  that  and  any  other 
physical  event  by  a  reference  to  the  series  of  physi- 
cal changes  separating  the  two.  When  did  Caesar 
decide  to  cross  ?  Surely,  we  say,  during  his  life- 
time —  on  the  day  of,  or  on  some  day  preceding, 
the  crossing.  The  psychologist  goes  so  far  as  to 
say:  When  a  certain  physical  change,  of  which 
we  at  present  know  little,  took  place  in  the  man's 
brain. 

I  shall  not  here  dwell  upon  the  peculiar  char- 
acter of  the  relation  between  the  decision  and  the 
brain-event  in  question.  What  the  relation  is,  can, 
I  believe,  be  made  reasonably  clear,  and  I  have 


GEORGE  STUART  FULLERTON      17 

elsewhere  essayed  the  task.^  That  which  I  am 
here  concerned  to  point  out  is,  that  we  never  at- 
tempt to  date  any  mental  occurrence  save  in  the 
one  way.  Without  the  physical  order  we  are 
wholly  at  sea.  When  did  Othello  find  out  that 
he  had  grounds  for  jealousy  ?  When  will  Brown 
make  up  his  mind  that  it  is  not  wise  to  speculate 
in  stocks  ?  When  did  I  have  that  rosy  dream  that 
I  had  inherited  a  fortune  ?  Is  there  no  sense  in 
asking  when  ?  Men  do  date  mental  occurrences. 
It  is  done  universally.  And  it  is  always  done  in 
the  same  way  —  some  point  is  selected  in  the  suc- 
cession of  physical  changes  which  constitute  the 
objective  order,  and  the  mental  occurrence  in 
question  is  referred  to  that. 

Moreover,  we  all  distinguish  between  the  minds 
of  Smith,  of  Jones,  and  of  Robinson.  Should  the 
three  men,  by  any  chance,  happen  to  have  pre- 
cisely similar  sensations,  we  could  never  conclude 
that  we  were  concerned  with  but  the  one  group 
of  sensations.  W^e  have  to  do  with  three  groups ; 
the  sensations  of  one  man  may  undergo  great 
change;  he  may  turn  and  walk  away  from  the 
object  at  which  he  has  been  looking;  the  other 
men  may  stand  still  and  continue  to  look  at  the 
object.  Whether  the  sensations  of  two  men  are 
conceived  to  be  similar  or  not,  our  recognition  of 
a  plurality  of  experiences  is  the  same.  It  is  enough 
for  us,  that,  in  the  one  case,  sensations  are  referred 

*  "  Introduction  to  Philosophy,"  New  York,  1906,  chapter  ix. 

2 


18  THE  NEW  REALISM 

to  the  one  body,  and,  in  the  other  case,  are  re- 
ferred to  another  body. 

Suppose  that  I  am  asked  to  beheve  in  a  fourth 
group  of  sensations,  and,  when  I  ask  to  what  body 
I  am  to  refer  them,  I  am  told  that  they  are  to  be 
referred  to  no  body.  They  are  not  to  be  con- 
ceived as  the  sensations  of  this  man  or  of  that 
man.  They  are  not  the  sensations  of  anyone 
who  has  been,  is,  or  shall  be  anywhere.  Can  I 
believe  in  such  a  group  ?  Never  !  I  can  undoubt- 
edly imagine  groups  of  sensations,  or,  at  any  rate, 
of  experiences  which,  if  referred  to  a  body,  I 
should  call  sensations.  But  I  cannot  believe  in 
them  as  real,  so  long  as  they  are  cut  off  wholly 
from  the  real  world  of  things.  They  are  ab- 
stractions, mere  imaginings.  To  talk  of  them  as 
existing  is  nonsense,  unless  I  mean  to  indicate 
by  the  word  only  that  certain  things  have  a  place 
in  my  thought,  and  are  actually  imagined. 

Now,  suppose  that  I  attempt  to  be  thoroughly 
idealistic;  suppose  that  I  ignore  the  objective 
order,  as  such,  and  try  to  order  my  world  solely 
with  reference  to  ideas  properly  so  called. 

Where  is  the  room,  or  the  experience  of  the 
room,  in  which  I  seem  to  be  sitting  ?  Is  it  be- 
tween the  idea  of  a  hall  and  the  idea  of  a  garden  ? 
Is  there  another  side  to  this  desk?  I  am  im- 
agining another  side,  it  is  true;  but  is  there  any- 
thing that  may  be  called  a  space-relation  between 
a  percept  and  a  memory- image,  as  such  ?     Does 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      19 

the  other  side  exist  now  ?  or  is  it  a  mere  poten- 
tiaUty  ?  Is  it  in  harmony  with  what  we  know  of 
desks  to  say  that  they  are  made  up  of  percepts 
and  memor}'- images  ? 

I  wake  from  sleep,  and,  looking  at  my  watch, 
observe  that  its  hands  are  not  in  the  position  in 
which  they  were  when  I  last  observed  it.  May 
I  say  that  I  have  slept  eight  hours  ?  Has  time 
elapsed  ?  So  far  as  my  immediate  experience 
goes,  nothing  has  elapsed.  If  I  have  slept  soundly, 
there  has  been  nothing  at  all  between  the  two  ex- 
periences in  question.  How  shall  I  date  my  wak- 
ing.? Not  by  referring  it  to  a  position  among  my 
sensations  or  ideas.  Did  anything  happen  while 
I  slept.?  Surely.  But  when  did  it  happen.?  Its 
happening  cannot  be  given  a  place  among  my 
past  sensations  or  ideas.  It  does  not  seem  more 
sensible  to  give  it  a  date  in  what  is  present  to  my 
imagination  after  I  awake.  Such  dates  we  reserve 
for  my  thoughts  about  what  happened. 

Again.  I  believe  that  other  men  live  now,  and 
that  men  lived  and  died  before  I  was  born.  I 
shall  not  here  try  to  prove  the  existence  of  other 
minds,  but  shall  accept  it,  as  the  world,  unlettered 
and  lettered,  unreflective  and  philosophic,  ideal- 
istic and  realistic,  has  accepted  and  does  accept 
it.  I  shall  ask  only,  how  are  we  forced  to  speak 
of  these  minds  if  we  really  ignore  the  external 
world,  the  physical  system  of  things  in  space  and 
time,  the  objective  order  of  experience  ? 


20  THE  NEW  REALISM 

We  have  seen  above  that  it  is  nonsense  to  talk 
of  a  particular  mind  which  is  not  particularized 
by  reference  to  some  particular  body.  May  I 
say  that  the  mind  of  the  Mayor  of  Philadelphia 
is  to  be  distinguished  from  the  mind  of  the  Mayor 
of  New  York  by  the  fact  that  the  one  is  referred 
to  a  given  group  of  my  ideas,  and  the  other  to 
another  group  ?  What  is  the  relation  of  these  two 
minds  to  each  other  when  I  am  not  thinking  about 
either  of  these  officials  ?  Do  they  have  real  bodies 
when  I  am  experiencing  what  Berkeley  calls 
"ideas  of  sense,"  and  only  imaginary  bodies  when 
I  am  experiencing  "ideas  of  imagination"?  If 
we  consistently  refuse  to  make  any  distinction 
between  things  and  our  percepts  or  images  of 
things,  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  we  are  to  escape 
out  of  this  tangle  of  absurdities. 

Furthermore,  we  all  accept  the  fact  that  the  mind 
of  Francis  Bacon  came  into  existence  at  an  earlier 
date  than  that  of  Berkeley.  How  far  apart  shall 
we  place  the  two  dates  ?  Surely,  I  have  no  satis- 
factory scheme  of  arrangement,  if  I  refer  Bacon's 
mind  to  my  idea  of  Bacon's  body  and  Berkeley's 
mind  to  my  idea  of  Berkeley's  body.  What  are 
the  dates  of  my  ideas  ?  They  have  themselves 
no  dates,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word,  if  there 
is  no  objective  order  of  things  distinguishable 
from  ideas.  Besides,  Bacon  and  Berkeley  lived 
and  died  before  I  had  any  ideas  at  all,  unless  his- 
tory is  to  be  utterly  repudiated. 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON       21 

It  may  be  maintained  that  the  idealist  is  not 
forced  to  be  so  complete  a  subjectivist,  pinning 
his  faith  to  a  world  into  which  nothing  is  admitted 
save  the  collections  of  phenomena  which  consti- 
tute finite  minds.  He  may  accept  a  Divine  Mind, 
as  did  Berkeley,  or  an  Absolute,  as  have  done 
various  other  philosophers,  and  may  use  it  as 
some  sort  of  a  cement  to  unite  the  little  w^orlds  of 
finite  individual  experience  which  seem  in  danger  of 
falling  into  mere  chaos  unless  ordered  and  related 
by  something  distinguishable  from  themselves. 

But  readers  of  Berkeley  will  remember  that  he 
gives  no  indication  how  a  Divine  Mind  is  to  be 
regarded  as  ordering  the  experiences  of  finite 
minds.  He  furnishes  us  with  no  world-order 
save  that  which  slips  in  involuntarily  in  his  recog- 
nition of  the  laws  of  nature,  in  his  half-grasped 
distinction  between  ideas  of  sense  and  ideas  of 
other  classes.  In  other  words,  he  does  not  help 
us  except  in  those  moments  in  which  he  is  in  dan- 
ger of  passing  over  to  realism  and  of  admitting 
an  objective  order,  one  not  to  be  confused  with 
what  is  mental.  As  for  the  Absolute,  or  rather 
the  Absolutes,  for  they  have  been  many,  it  remains 
to  inquire  how  such  can  serve  our  purpose. 

Manifestly,  an  Absolute  that  is  degraded  to 
the  rank  of  a  mere  Unknowable  can  play  no  part 
whatever  in  ordering  phenomena.  I  perceive  this 
desk  here;  I  believe  that  there  is  a  front- door  to 
this  house.    WTiat  is  the  relation  between  the  two  ? 


22  THE  NEW  REALISM 

Is  one  at  one  point  in  the  Unknowable,  and  the 
other  at  another  ?  I  have  a  percept  at  the  present 
moment;  I  beheve  that  Cato  had  a  percept  at 
some  time  in  the  past.  Is  this  time  which  makes 
me  regard  my  percept  and  his  as  not  simultaneous 
measured  by  a  reference  to  the  Unknowable? 
No  man  living,  unlearned  or  learned,  fixes  events 
in  his  life  by  assigning  to  them  dates  in  the  Un- 
knowable, nor  does  he  determine  the  location 
of  objects  or  their  distances  from  one  another  by 
having  recourse  to  the  same  useless  nonentity. 

One  may  argue  that  the  idealist  who  accepts 
an  Absolute  does  not  make  of  it  a  mere  Unknow- 
able. Yet,  so  far  as  the  part  which  it  plays  in 
ordering  anything  or  accounting  for  anything 
goes,  the  Bradleyan  Absolute,  at  least,  seems 
quite  as  useless.  We  are  informed  that  all  exist- 
ence is  psychic  existence ;  it  is  assumed  that  there 
is  a  multitude  of  finite  minds  or  centres  of  expe- 
rience; the  "Reality"  of  these  finite  minds  is 
called  the  Absolute.  But  it  should  be  observed 
that  in  this  Absolute  there  is  no  distinction  of 
space  or  time,  quantity  or  quality,  or,  indeed,  of 
anything  that  means  anything.  Phenomena  are 
not  ordered  or  distinguished  from  one  another  by 
reference  to  it.  No  account  of  anything  is  rendered 
more  intelligible  by  bringing  it  in.  What  is  the 
relation  between  successive  presentations  in  my 
mind,  or  between  presentations  in  my  mind  and 
those  in  another? 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      23 

No  answer  to  such  questions  can  even  be  at- 
tempted upon  the  basis  proposed.  The  real  world, 
both  of  common  life  and  of  science,  is  simply 
abandoned.  Have  I  now  a  percept,  and  did  Cato 
have  one  at  some  time  in  the  past  ?  this  is  mere 
appearance  —  in  Reality  there  is  no  time,  and,  of 
course,  no  way  of  measuring  time.  How  may  I 
distinguish  Cato's  percept  from  mine,  or,  indeed, 
his  centre  of  experience  from  my  own  ?  In  Reality 
there  is  no  distinction.  It  is  puzzling  to  know 
why  the  man  who  wishes  to  extend  or  to  clarify 
his  knowledge  should  concern  himself  with  this 
psychic  Unknowable  at  all. 

But  may  not  the  idealist  accept  an  Absolute 
that  is  really  of  some  significance  for  knowledge  .'* 
May  he  not  accept  a  mind  which  can,  in  some 
intelligible  sense,  serve  as  a  bond  of  connection, 
a  basis  of  orderly  arrangement,  for  phenomena  ? 

What  is  to  prevent  one  from  putting  such  a 
mind  in  place  of  the  external  world  in  which  most 
of  us  believe  ?  Why  not  maintain  that  the  external 
world,  as  directly  revealed  to  each  of  us,  is  a  por- 
tion of  such  a  mind  ?  that  finite  minds  are  to  be 
regarded  either  as  parts  of  this  inclusive  mind, 
or  as  related  to  various  bits  of  it  in  some  way  that 
may  fix  their  relations  to  each  other  ? 

In  other  words,  may  one  treat  an  Absolute 
Mind  as  science  and  common  sense  treat  the  physi- 
cal world  in  space  and  time,  relating  this  occur- 
rence and   that  in   the  order   which   it  furnishes. 


24  THE   NEW  REALISM 

referring  this  mind  and  that  to  different  bodies 
in  it,  and  thus  fixing  the  relations  of  phenomena  of 
all  sorts  in  the  universe  ? 

To  this  I  think  we  have  to  answer:  It  is  an 
abuse  of  the  word  "mind"  to  apply  it  to  this 
system  of  phenomena.  The  words  "physical" 
and  "mental"  are  not  to  be  used  at  random. 
They  have  a  different  connotation.  If  there  is 
one  philosophical  truth  which  seems  to  have  met 
with  general  acceptance  rather  than  most  others, 
it  is  that,  in  some  sense  of  the  words,  we  have 
objects  in  the  external  world  in  common^  but  are 
the  private  proprietors  of  the  mental  phenomena 
which  we  may  experience.  Just  what  this  "in 
common"  means,  I  shall  not  here  inquire;  but 
it  does  mark  a  well-recognized  distinction  between 
the  physical  and  the  mental.  We  perceive  trees 
and  houses ;  we  infer  our  neighbor's  sensations 
and  ideas. 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  school  of  thought  which 
maintains  that  we  know  other  minds  directly, 
and  are  not  shut  up  to  the  well-known  argument 
from  analogy.  But  this  doctrine  sounds  plausible 
only  so  long  as  it  confines  itself  to  vague  phrases 
such  as :  "  consciousness  is  social  from  the  be- 
ginning," etc. ;  it  breaks  down  just  as  soon  as 
one  grows  explicit.  In  common  life  it  is  as- 
sumed that  we  infer  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
other  men  and  of  the  brutes  from  indications 
gathered  from  their  bodily  expressions.     In  psy- 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      25 

chology  it  would  be  regarded  as  absurd  to  main- 
tain that  we  may  introspectively  scrutinize  the 
consciousness  of  another  as  we  do  scrutinize  our 
own.  The  great  majority  of  philosophers  have 
accepted  this  truth  frankly;  and,  as  I  have  indi- 
cated above,  those  who  have  not  done  so  show, 
when  they  condescend  to  particulars  and  grow 
definite,  that  they  are  forced  to  acknowledge  the 
truth  as  well.  I  perceive  the  things  that  my 
neighbor  sees  and  touches ;  his  percepts  of  those 
things  I  do  not  perceive;   I  merely  infer  them. 

This  peculiarity  of  the  mental,  the  fact  that  it 
is  the  property  of  a  given  consciousness  and  is 
not  directly  revealed  to  another,  we  have  no  right 
to  deny  to  an  Absolute  Mind,  if  we  really  are  talk- 
ing about  a  mind,  and  have  not  introduced  con- 
fusion and  desolation  with  the  introduction  of 
that  unhappy  word  "absolute."  I  do  not  directly 
perceive  the  sensations  and  ideas  of  the  brute; 
I  do  not  directly  perceive  those  of  my  fellow-men; 
there  is  no  reason  for  maintaining  that  I  directly 
perceive  the  mental  experiences  of  any  other 
being,  however  sublime. 

But  we  do  have,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  cer- 
tain direct  experiences  which  we  can  recognize 
as  those  of  an  objective  order  of  experience,  and 
can  distinguish  from  subjective  changes  which 
are  taking  place  in  ourselves.  I  can  watch  a  soap- 
bubble  grow;  I  can  walk  toward  one  which  I 
recognize  as  remaining  of  the  same  size,  and  can 


26  THE   NEW  REALISM 

have  a  whole  series  of  experiences  which  are  ad- 
mitted by  everybody  to  be  series  of  changing 
percepts,  and  not  indicative  of  change  in  the 
object.  I  can  destroy  a  soap-bubble;  I  can  cause 
it  to  disappear  by  closing  my  eyes.  Neither  in 
science  nor  in  common  life  do  we  confuse  such 
things.  In  the  one  case,  we  recognize  that  we 
have  to  do  with  the  physical;  in  the  other,  that 
we  are  concerned  with  the  mental. 

What  right  has  the  philosopher  to  rub  out  this 
distinction  ?  He  has  no  right.  The  idealistic 
philosospher  who  maintains  that  the  objective 
order  which  we  are  all  forced  to  accept,  and  of 
which  science  attempts  to  give  us  an  exact  account, 
is  an  Absolute  Mind,  has  simply  recognized  the 
external  world  and  has  given  it  the  wrong  name. 
In  giving  it  the  wrong  name,  he  may  easily  be 
seduced  into  assigning  to  it  attributes  which  can 
properly  be  assigned  only  to  minds.  He  may 
speak  of  it  as  good,  as  blessed,  as  perfect,  etc. 
When  one  perceives  clearly  what  one  is  doing,  it 
is  not  difficult  to  see  that  all  this  is  illegitimate. 
It  is  not  sensible  to  say  that  the  external  world  is 
happy  or  is  good,  just  as  it  is  not  sensible  to  say 
that  a  percept  is  in  a  drawer,  that  a  dream-image 
is  a  foot  long,  or  that  one's  memories  of  leaden 
images  have  a  high  specific  gravity. 

Such  considerations  as  the  foregoing  lead  me 
to  the  conviction  that  I  am  not  wrong  in  drawing 
a  sharp  distinction  between  the  physical  and  the 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      27 

mental,  and  in  refusing  to  obliterate  that  dis- 
tinction even  out  of  courtesy  to  an  Absolute.  We 
do  live  in  a  World.  Even  in  common  life  we  meas- 
ure things  in  space,  we  date  events  in  time,  we 
talk  of  other  minds  than  our  own  and  refer  them 
to  given  bodies.  A  body  that  exists  nowhere  and 
at  no  time  does  not  exist;  a  mind  which  can  be 
referred  to  nothing  means  for  us  only  an  imagined 
mind.  Science  accepts  this,  and  differs  from  com- 
mon thought  only  in  being  more  complete  and 
exact.  In  other  words,  we  find  ourselves  in  a 
system  of  experiences ;  and  reflection  reveals  to 
us  that  our  system  would  be  no  system  were  the 
physical  really  left  out. 

Why,  then,  do  men  find  themselves  tempted  to 
be  idealists  and  to  ignore  the  physical  as  such  ? 
There  is  certainly  some  plausible  reason,  or  so 
many  acute  minds  would  not  have  been  impelled 
to  tread  a  path  which  leads  to  conclusions  seem- 
ingly in  so  little  accord  with  common  experience 
and  with  good  sense. 

II 

Why  Men  become  Idealists 

I  have  referred  earlier  in  this  paper  to  the  verbal 
confusion  and  to  the  emotional  influences  which 
may  lead  some  men  to  embrace  idealism.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  dwell  upon  such  things  here.  Men 
of  keen  mind  are  not,  as  a  rule,  a  slave  to  the 


28  THE   NEW  REALISM 

associations  which  attach  to  words.  I  have  known 
only  one  foreigner  who  became  an  x\merican 
democrat  because  of  the  etymology  of  the  word. 
And  earnest  men  who  are  seeking  the  truth  ought 
to  keep  their  emotions  in  check,  and  not  sacrifice 
their  logic  upon  the  altar  of  their  desires. 

I  am  now  concerned  only  with  those  who  are 
willing  to  embrace  a  philosophical  doctrine  for 
no  other  reason  than  that  it  seems  to  be  a  reason- 
able one,  or  at  any  rate,  a  more  reasonable  one 
than  any  rival  doctrine  presented  for  their  con- 
sideration. I  suppose  that  what  chiefly  influences 
such  men  to  become  idealists  is  that  they  have  a 
vivid  realization  of  the  fact  that  there  is  no  sense 
in  talking  about  the  external  world  except  as  we 
know  something  about  it,  and  that  we  cannot 
know  anything  about  it  unless  we  have  sensations. 

This  is  a  truth  which  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
sufficiently  vivid  to  the  realists  of  a  past  age  —  to 
the  realists  who  held  the  ground  before  idealism 
became  the  fashion  —  though  one  can  find  pas- 
sages enough  in  their  works  that  bring  the  truth 
clearly  before  the  mind  of  the  man  who  has  passed 
through  the  schools  of  the  idealists.  From  a  very 
early  time  men  distinguished  between  things  and 
the  sensations  that  they  arouse  in  us ;  and,  not 
infrequently,  men  even  dwelt  upon  the  possible 
discrepancy  between  things  as  they  are  and  things 
as  they  seem  to  present  themselves  to  our  senses. 

To  the  Cartesian,  the  distinction  between  things 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      29 

and  our  knowledge  of  them  was  sharpened,  as  the 
body,  and  the  processes  which  result  in  perception, 
became  more  definitely  known.  It  came  to  be 
realized  that  something  must  take  place  in  the 
brain,  if  a  man  is  to  have  a  sensation.  It  was  ac- 
cepted that  all  sorts  of  things  may  go  on  in  the 
outer  world,  and  even  in  the  human  body,  the 
man  remaining,  so  long  as  they  are  not  reported 
at  the  little  central  office,  in  ignorance  of  them. 
From  this  it  seems  but  a  short  step  to  the  con- 
clusion that  we  have  no  immediate  knowledge 
of  anything  but  images,  representatives  of  things; 
that  we  are  directly  conscious  of  mental  phenomena 
only,  and  must  depend  for  all  our  knowledge  of  the 
physical  upon  some  inference  for  which  a  justifi- 
cation may  not  unreasonably  be  demanded.  One 
is  moved  to  assert  that  our  life  is  passed  among 
images ;  that  they,  at  least,  are  certain  and  indu- 
bitable, but  that  what  lies  beyond  them  is  some- 
thing in  which  we  may  believe  or  disbelieve  —  is 
legitimate  matter  for  theoretic  doubt. 

This  conclusion  is  new  as  well  as  old;  it  is,  in 
some  quarters,  very  much  in  the  fashion  to-day. 
Moreover,  following  the  old  round,  the  possibility 
of  doubt  first  ripens  into  doubt,  and  then  rots  into 
denial.  We  are  informed  that  we  are  shut  up  for 
all  our  knowledge  to  sensations  and  to  memories 
of  sensations,  since  we  can  know  only  the  messages 
conducted  along  the  nerves  to  the  brain.  Then 
we  are  told  that  we  have  no  legitimate  reason  for 


30  THE  NEW  REALISM 

even  trying  to  penetrate  the  darkness  which,  like 
a  wall,  shuts  in  our  sensations.  Sensations  and 
their  copies  are  declared  to  be  the  property  of 
science;  this  is  land  that  can  be  enclosed  and 
cultivated  in  some  rational  way.  What  lies  in  the 
meaningless  beyond  is  generously  bestowed  upon 
that  misguided  collector  of  ciphers,  the  meta- 
physician, the  poor  rich  man,  whose  wealth  is 
purely  imaginary.  The  doctrine  has  recently 
elicited   some  applause. 

I  shall  not  dwell  upon  the  untenability  of  this 
doctrine  —  upon  its  getting  sensations  by  invoking 
the  aid  of  the  body,  and  then  denying  that  there  is 
a  body;  upon  its  using  the  word  "sensation"  to 
mark  a  distinction,  and  then  repudiating  the 
foundation  upon  which  the  distinction  must  be 
based.  That  this  house  is  divided  against  itself 
must  be  evident  to  everyone  who  gives  the  matter 
a  little  careful  attention. 

Nevertheless,  untenable  as  the  doctrine  clearly 
is,  it  is  not  equally  clear  that  one  may  not  say  a 
good  deal  in  its  behalf.  One  may  be  tempted  to 
maintain  that,  if  ever  a  self-contradictory  hypoth- 
esis deserved  a  little  respect,  this  one  may  make 
a  claim  to  kind  treatment.  When  inspected  in 
itself  it  is  seen  to  be  a  suspicious  character;  yet 
what  appear  to  be  irreproachable  witnesses  may  be 
summoned  to  testify  in  its  favor. 

Thus,  common  sense  recognizes  that  we  can  only 
see  things  when  our  eyes  are  open  and  feel  them 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      31 

when  we  touch  them  with  our  bodies.  The  func- 
tion of  the  senses  in  mediating  a  knowledge  of 
things  is  matter  of  every-day  experience.  The 
psychologist  describes  for  us  in  detail  the  process 
by  which  we  came  to  a  knowledge  of  a  world  of 
things,  and  he  founds  all  our  information  about 
the  world  ultimately  upon  impressions  made 
upon  the  periphery  of  the  body  and  messages  con- 
ducted therefrom  to  the  central  nervous  system. 
It  is  a  rash  man  that  will  condemn  the  whole  pro- 
cedure of  the  science  of  psychology.  And  yet,  if 
one  accepts  it,  what  then  ? 

If  we  leave  such  general  considerations  and  come 
back  to  the  experience  mentioned  earlier  in  this 
paper  as  one  in  which  an  objective  order  is  revealed, 
are  we  not  in  the  same  case  ?  I  stand  with  open 
eyes  and  watch  the  soap-bubble  expand.  Both 
the  plain  man  and  the  man  of  science  would  agree 
with  me  in  maintaining  that  something  is  happen- 
ing in  the  physical  world.  But,  after  all,  is  there 
a  single  experience  in  the  whole  series  revealed  to 
me  that  may  not  properly  be  termed  sensation  ? 
If  I  stood  nearer  or  farther  away,  I  should  not  see 
just  what  I  do  see.  If  my  eyes  were  closed,  I  should 
not  see  anything  at  all. 

Moreover,  I  may  reflect  that,  as  our  experiences 
of  things  differ  according  to  the  relation  of  our 
senses  to  them,  so  we  have  every  reason  to  believe 
that  the  experiences  of  different  minds  differ. 
The   color-blind    man   does    not  see  what  I   see. 


32  THE  NEW  REALISM 

The  experience  of  the  world,  if  we  may  call  it 
such,  enjoyed  by  lower  creatures  in  their  descend- 
ing series,  probably  varies  more  and  more  widely 
from  my  own.  What  the  world  may  seem  like  to 
possible  higher  creatures,  I  may  try  to  guess,  but 
I  can  be  sure  of  little  save  that  a  difference  must  be 
expected.  Does  it  not  seem  true,  then,  that  what 
the  world  is  perceived  to  be  is  a  function  of  the 
creature  experiencing  the  world  ?  What  more  than 
this  is  needed  to  make  a  man  some  sort  of  an  ideal- 
ist.^ For  my  part,  I  am  tempted  to  believe  that 
the  man  who  has  never  felt  any  leaning  toward 
idealism,  notwithstanding  the  protest  of  science 
and  of  common  experience,  has  never  seen  very 
deeply  into  the  constitution  of  experience.  There 
appear  to  be  so  many  external  worlds,  all  unlike 
each  other,  and  each  chained  to  the  senses  of 
some  perceiving  creature.  Where,  in  all  this,  is 
the  world? 

Ill 

The  New  Realism 

There  is  a  form  of  realism  sometimes  attacked  by 
the  idealist,  which  it  is  not  a  difficult  task  to  de- 
moUsh,  but  which,  in  our  day,  scarcely  seems  to 
have  a  claim  upon  powder  and  shot.  He  who 
holds  to  an  external  world  not  revealed  in  our  ex- 
periences, but  existing  quite  outside  of  and  apart 
from  them,  an  external  world   to  which  no  path 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      33 

leads,  and  which  cannot  be  described  in  any  intel- 
ligible terms,  may  be  permitted  to  cherish  his  faith 
in  peace.  As  he  cannot  advance  what  may  prop- 
erly be  called  an  argument,  we  are  under  no  obli- 
gation to  meet  him  with  what  may  properly  be 
called  an  answer. 

To  refute  such  a  realism  is  not  to  refute  realism. 
The  words  "sensation"  and  "thing,"  "inner" 
and  "outer,"  must  mark  some  significant  dis- 
tinction, if  they  are  to  be  worth  disputing  about. 
In  the  first  part  of  this  paper  1  have  tried  to  show 
that  they  do  mark  such  a  distinction,  and  that  this 
distinction  is  one  universally  recognized,  although 
it  is  recognized  by  a  few  inadvertently  and  reluc- 
tantly. 

In  answer  to  the  idealistic  contention  set  forth  a 
little  further  back,  namely,  that  there  is  no  ex- 
perience of  the  world  where  there  is  no  sensation, 
I  advance,  not  a  denial,  but  a  complementary 
statement.  It  is  this :  There  is  no  sensation,  that 
can  be  recognized  as  such,  where  there  is  no  ex- 
perience oj  the  world. 

What  is  a  sensation  ?  The  word  is  surely  not  one 
to  be  used  at  random.  No  one  thinks  of  employ- 
ing it  as  a  mere  name  for  anything  and  everything. 
When  we  imagine  a  tree  or  a  house,  we  do  not 
admit  that  we  are  concerned  with  sensations. 
How  can  we  distinguish  between  sensations  and 
such  experiences  as  these  ? 

But  one  answer  to  this  question  can  be  given. 

3 


34  THE   NEW  REALISM 

We  find  in  experience  an  objective  order  of  phe- 
nomena. No  one  who  has  not  senses  finds  it,  of 
course.  The  phenomena  that  stand  in  the  objec- 
tive order  are  revealed,  i.  e.,  they  may  be  referred 
to  the  senses  of  someone,  and,  in  so  far,  they  are  his 
perception  of  the  objective  order  —  the  man  is  rec- 
ognized as  experiencing  sensations.  But,  although 
we  constantly  refer  phenomena  to  our  senses,  this  is 
not  our  only  way  of  treating  them.  We  relate  them 
to  each  other  directly,  abstracting  from  the  relation 
to  sense,  and  in  so  far  we  recognize  them  as  having 
their  place  in  an  objective  order.  As  so  considered 
the  phenomena  in  question  are  not  sensations ; 
they  are  qualities  of  things.  That  phenomena 
may  have  this  double  relation  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  one  set  of  sciences  occupies  itself  with 
them  in  the  one  relation,  and  another  busies  itself 
with  them  as  standing  in  the  other.  We  can- 
not repudiate  all  these  sciences.  A  color  merely 
imagined  or  seen  in  a  dream  cannot  be  treated  by 
physical  science  as  in  any  sense  the  property  of  a 
thing;  it  cannot  be  regarded  by  psychology  as  a 
sensation. 

He  who  dwells  upon  sense-organs,  nerves,  and 
messages,  gives  a  meaning  to  the  word  sensation; 
if  he  subsequently  discards  this  physiological  ap- 
paratus, or  sublimates  it  into  a  mere  "projection," 
he  ought  to  discard  with  it  all  the  meaning  he  has 
gained,  and  ought,  in  justice,  to  abandon  the  use 
of  the  word.     If,  by  bad  luck,  he  inconsistently 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      35 

holds  on  to  it,  he  becomes  an  idealist,  a  sub- 
jectivist. 

Any  realism  which  claims  a  right  to  recognition 
at  the  present  day  ought  to  recognize  and  to 
incorporate  within  itself  at  least  as  much  truth 
as  has  been  seen  by  the  subjectivist,  and  all  that 
may  reasonably  be  deduced  from  it.  What  should 
such  a  realism  admit  ?  That  I  shall  endeavour  to 
set  forth  below. 

1.  First  of  all,  the  realist  should  frankly  admit 
that  the  only  external  world  about  which  it  can  be 
profitable  to  talk  at  all  is  an  external  world  revealed 
in  experience.  At  the  same  time,  it  is  of  no  little 
importance  to  discover  what  one  has  a  right  to 
mean  by  this  world  revealed  in  experience.  When 
I  say  that  I  perceive  a  world,  I  do  not  mean  merely 
that  I  am  aware  of  a  given  group  or  succession  of 
phenomena  of  a  particular  sort.  The  plain  man, 
the  man  of  science,  the  philosopher,  all  recognize 
the  fact  that  I  may  speak  of  perceiving  the  same 
tree,  whether  I  perceive  it  from  a  distance  or  near 
at  hand,  or  whether  I  am  made  aware  of  it  through 
the  sense  of  vision  or  the  sense  of  touch.  Even 
the  idealistic  philosopher  has  dwelt  upon  this 
truth  —  it  was  Berkeley  who  pointed  out  that  we 
speak  with  propriety  when  we  say  that  we  hear, 
see,  and  touch  the  same  coach,  although  our  ex- 
periences in  hearing,  seeing,  and  touching  are  not 
identical.  The  tree  is  not  to  be  confounded  with 
any  one  of  the  experiences  that  I  have ;  it  may  be 


36  THE  NEW  REALISM 

revealed  in  any  one.  If  our  experiences  are  con- 
nected in  certain  regular  ways,  as  they  are,  a  single 
experience  may  represent  an  indefinitely  large 
group,  and  may  give  information  regarding  it. 

It  is,  then,  perfectly  proper  to  distinguish 
between  an  object  in  the  outer  world  and  any 
given  experience  of  that  object.  To  draw  this 
distinction,  one  is  in  no  wise  compelled  to  go  be- 
yond experience,  and  to  lose  oneself  in  the  region 
of  the  unknown  or  the  unknowable.  It  is  only 
necessary  to  realize  what  the  constitution  of 
experience  is. 

2.  When  I  arrive  at  a  knowledge  of  other  minds, 
I  know  that  they  may  not  be  having  the  same  ex- 
periences that  I  am  having,  and  yet  I  say,  without 
being  blamed  for  saying  it,  that  they  perceive  the 
same  things.  It  is  not  an  eccentricity  for  me  to  talk 
thus.  I  am  marking  a  truth  that  is  generally  rec- 
ognized. The  realist  should  frankly  admit  that 
my  experiences  are  not  identical  with  those  of  my 
neighbor,  and  even  that  they  may  be  very  widely 
different  from  them. 

But  there  is  nothing  in  this  to  lead  him  to  deny 
that  we  both  perceive  the  same  tree,  or  to  fall  back 
upon  some  unknowable  and  unexperienced  tree 
that  no  one  perceives.  He  should  analyze  the  situa- 
tion, and  try  to  discover  what  the  use  of  the  word 
*'same"  indicates  in  such  a  connection.  It  mani- 
festly does  not  indicate  that  we  are  talking  of 
identical  experiences.     Everyone  knows  that  they 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      37 

are  not  identical.    And  yet,  we  are  evidently  talking 
about  something  that  is  revealed  in  experience. 

What  has  been  said  a  little  above  may  well  be 
borne  in  mind  here.  I  have  many  different  ex- 
periences and  yet  say  that  I  perceive  the  same  tree ; 
it  is  perfectly  allowable  to  distinguish  between 
the  one  tree  and  any  of  the  experiences  as  such. 
Their  differences  may  be  dropped  out  of  sight  and 
emphasis  laid  upon  the  function  performed  by 
them  all,  upon  the  one  set  of  relations  in  which  they 
all  stand.  Even  so  it  is  possible  to  abstract  from 
the  differences  which  characterize  the  experiences 
of  two  men,  and  to  speak  of  the  one  tree  which 
both  perceive. 

With  open  eyes  and  standing  at  a  given  distance 
from  a  tree,  I  perceive  it ;  I  also  perceive  the  body 
of  another  man,  its  eyes  being  directed  toward  the 
tree  in  question ;  I  infer  that  he  has  a  perception, 
as  I  have.  I  may  stand  nearer  to  the  object  or 
further  away ;  he  may  stand  nearer  to  it  or  at  a 
greater  distance.  Under  such  circumstances,  I 
must  admit  that  my  experiences  will  vary,  and  I 
must  believe  that  his  will  vary,  too.  But,  if  it  is 
legitimate  for  me  to  speak  of  the  one  tree  notwith- 
standing the  variations  in  my  own  experiences,  it 
is  legitimate  for  me  to  use  the  same  words  not- 
withstanding the  variations  in  his.  The  variations 
can  be  set  aside ;  in  fact,  they  are  set  aside,  and  it 
is  recognized  that  something  in  the  objective  order 
of  my  experiences  serves  as  a  stepping-stone  to  the 


38  THE   NEW  REALISM 

experiences  of  another.  Thus  we  perceive  the  One 
World.  Science  very  properly  treats  it  as  one, 
recognizing  that  the  experiences  of  one  man  are 
not  cut  off  from  those  of  another,  but  belong  to  the 
same  system  with  them.  What  has  been  dropped 
out  of  view  is  taken  up  again  when  we  turn  to  the 
science  of  psychology,  and  ask  how  the  world 
appears  to  this  individual  or  to  that. 

3.  Finally,  the  realist  should  be  quite  as  ready 
as  anyone  else  to  admit  that  our  knowledge  of  the 
world  grows  and  changes ;  that  we  make  mis- 
takes and  afterwards  correct  them;  that  many 
things  which  we  now  believe  to  be  true  about  the 
world,  we  may  later  find  out  to  be  untrue,  and 
may  have  to  replace  with  other  knowledge.  Is 
such  a  position  compatible  with  the  doctrine  that 
an  objective  order  of  phenomena  is  directly  re- 
vealed in  experience  ?    Surely  it  is. 

No  philosopher  may  deny  those  truths  which  lie 
plainly  before  the  eyes  of  all  men,  and  are  im- 
bedded in  the  very  foundations  of  common  ex- 
perience and  of  science.  He  who  would  dare  to 
maintain  that  the  world  is  directly  perceived,  and 
that,  hence,  w^e  immediately  know  the  world  just  as 
it  is,  and  know  all  about  it,  does  not  merit  the  com- 
pliment of  a  labored  refutation.  He  is  already 
refuted  by  palpable  fact;  we  learn  to  know  the 
world  gradually,  and  have  to  expend  upon  the 
process  much  labor;  our  common  knowledge  of 
nature  grows,  science  grows.     He  is  a  desperate 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      39 

realist,  and  blind,  indeed,  who  would  undertake 
to  deny  such  facts.  Philosophy  should  understand 
and  interpret  common  experience  and  science,  not 
oppose  them  with  preposterous  hypotheses. 

But,  though  our  knowledge  of  the  world  grows, 
it  still  remains  true  that  we  do  learn  to  know  the 
world,  to  know  not  merely  my  ideas  or  the  ideas  of 
another,  but  the  world  —  a  something  contrasted 
with  everyone's  ideas.  There  is  found  in  experi- 
ence the  antithesis  of  subjective  and  objective,  of 
inner  and  outer.  What  is  directly  apprehended  is 
but  little,  yet  that  little  serves  as  the  basis  of  an 
imposing  structure;  were  it  not  given,  the  struc- 
ture could  not  be  raised. 

Moreover,  in  raising  it,  we  do  not  build  at 
random.  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  piece  out  the 
deficiencies  of  sense-knowledge  as  it  may  happen 
to  please  me,  making  for  myself  any  or  every  kind 
of  a  world.  To  do  this  is  not  to  learn  to  know  the 
world ;  it  is,  rather,  to  produce  a  castle  in  the  air, 
a  phantom  which  dissolves  in  the  presence  of  the 
tests  of  truth  which  all  men  are  able,  within  certain 
limits,  to  apply  to  things. 

In  raising  our  edifice,  we  have  the  foundation 
of  the  immediately  given,  and  we  have  the  rules 
of  the  inductive  and  the  deductive  logic.  One  may 
be  impatient  of  waiting  for  the  materials  to  serve 
as  a  foundation;  one  may  generalize  hastily  or 
make  disjointed  deductions ;  error  is  possible,  and 
error  of  divers  sorts.    But  there  is,  at  least,  a  theo- 


40  THE  NEW  REALISM 

retic  possibility  of  attaining  to  unshakable  truth. 
Even  a  doubt  cannot  rest  upon  nothing;  there 
would  be  no  error,  in  any  sense  that  has  a  distinc- 
tive meaning,  were  there  nothing  with  which  to 
contrast  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  have  some- 
thing with  which  to  contrast  it;  were  it  not  so, 
the  correction  of  error  would  be  a  meaningless 
expression. 

I  think  it  is  worth  while  to  dwell  upon  the  truth 
that  it  is  not  well  to  emphasize  excessively  the 
uncertainty  or  unreality  of  human  knowledge  and 
the  ignorance  of  man.  Once,  men  were  fond  of 
doing  this  in  the  interests  of  theological  orthodoxy. 
The  scene  has  shifted,  and  we  find  it  done  now  in 
various  quarters  in  the  interests  of  highly  doubtful 
philosophical  speculations.  We  are  told  that 
science  is  all  very  well  in  its  own  sphere,  but  that 
it  cannot  give  us  the  real  truth  about  things ;  or 
we  are  warned  that  the  concepts  of  science  are 
self- contradictory,  and  will  not  bear  careful  scru- 
tiny. In  so  far  as  such  statements  are  not  based 
upon  metaphysical  considerations  which  we  may 
well  regard  with  suspicion,  they  constitute  an 
attack  upon  that  only  which  lies  upon  the  confines 
of  our  knowledge.  Molecules,  atoms,  the  ether, 
and  what  not,  may  conceivably  be  swept  into  the 
shadowy  realm  of  exploded  beliefs.  Nevertheless, 
our  common  experience  of  the  worlds  of  matter 
and  of  mind  would  remain  unshaken,  and  with  it 
a  vast  number  of  truths  which  men  have  never 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      41 

doubted  and  which  men  do  not  doubt.  Nor  would 
the  accepted  methods  of  the  investigation  of  truth 
be  done  away  with.  Men  have  known  for  a  very 
long  time  that  it  is  easier  to  lift  a  heavy  stone  on 
the  end  of  a  lever  than  it  is  to  raise  it  in  the  hands. 
No  criticism  of  the  fundamental  concepts  of 
mechanics  can  sunfjrest  a  doubt  here.  And  it  does 
not  sound  sensible  in  such  cases  to  say  that  our 
statement  regarding  the  raising  of  the  stone  is  not 
really  true,  but  is  only  a  convenient  way  of  ex- 
pressing something. 

When  we  have  reason  to  believe  that  what  we 
have  accepted  as  accurate  statements  of  truth  are 
either  inaccurate  or  wholly  false,  we  are  not  left 
in  a  mere  chaos.  We  are  left  with  the  truth  we 
had  before  we  framed  such  statements.  We  must 
come  back  to  common  experience,  and  start  out 
once  more  upon  the  toilsome  road  of  observation 
and  inference.  Never  are  we  without  a  world ; 
we  have  discovered  merely  that  we  do  not  know 
quite  so  much  about  the  world  as  we  supposed 
we  did. 

There  is,  thus,  nothing  to  prevent  a  man  from 
being  a  modern  realist,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
from  distinguishing  between  the  world  as  it  is, 
and  the  particular  stage  in  the  knowledge  of  the 
world  at  which  we  may  seem  to  have  arrived.  But, 
in  using  the  phrase  "the  world  as  it  is,"  one  must 
talk  sense.  He  who  understands  it  to  mean  some 
sort  of  an  Unknowable  must  laugh  at  the  efforts  of 


42  THE  NEW  REALISM 

science  to  attain  to  truth.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
who  is  carried  away  by  his  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  observation  is  not  introspection,  of  the  fact 
that  we  do  have  at  times  a  direct  experience  of  the 
objective  order  of  phenomena,  and  who,  on  this 
inadequate  basis,  is  betrayed  into  claiming  that 
"  the  world  as  it  is,"  is  directly  revealed  in  its  ful- 
ness to  the  mind  of  man,  is  plainly  guilty  of  ex- 
travagance. Did  we  know  the  world  thus,  there 
would  be  no  disputes,  no  correction  of  errors,  no 
growth  in  knowledge. 

"The  world  as  it  is"  is  the  goal  of  our  en- 
deavors. We  start  with  some  ground  beneath 
our  feet,  and  we  have  an  approved  method  of 
procedure.  That  progress  has  been  made  ought  to 
be  admitted  even  by  the  most  pessimistic.  The 
history  of  science  is  not  a  mere  list  of  revolutions, 
a  series  of  unstable  attempts  at  government  suc- 
ceeded in  each  case  by  a  reign  of  terror.  Were  it 
no  better  than  this,  men  would  have  been  dis- 
couraged long  ago.  Some  truths  have  been 
established ;  and  there  is  not  now,  as  there  has 
never  been,  ground  for  universal  doubt,  not- 
withstanding the  rejection  of  many  cherished 
hypotheses. 

IV 

Is  this  Realism  ? 
I  fancy  it  will  seem  to  some  that  a  realism  that 
admits  as  much  as  is  admitted  in  the  preceding 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      43 

section  can  scarcely  be  called  a  realism  at  all. 
It  distinguishes  carefully,  it  is  true,  between  the 
subjective  and  the  objective;  and  refuses,  appar- 
ently quite  in  harmony  with  common  sense  and 
science,  to  call  what  is  revealed  as  belonging  to 
tlie  objective  order  mental.  It  insists  that  the  world 
should  not  be  confused  with  anyone's  sensations 
and  ideas. 

But,  after  all,  does  it  not  admit  that  the  world 
is  revealed  in  phenomena  of  some  sort,  and  that 
these  phenomena  are  not  independent  of  the 
bodily  senses  ^  Is  not  "the  world  as  it  is"  simply 
a  full  and  accurate  account  of  the  world  in  terms 
of  such  phenomena  ?  What,  then,  shall  w^e  say 
about  "the  world  as  it  was,"  before  the  senses  of 
man  and  such  creatures  as  man  were  developed  ? 
Did  objects  exist  as  we  describe  them? 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  science  does  not 
hesitate  to  give,  with  reservations,  an  account  of 
the  state  of  the  world  as  it  w^as  before  man  and 
his  senses  came  into  being.  Whatever  objection 
the  man  of  science  may  bring  against  any  such 
account,  it  is  not  that  it  is  couched  in  terms  in- 
telligible to  man.  His  objection  is  always  that 
the  account  in  question  may  not  be  a  good  one  of 
its  kind.  But  may  we  not  raise  the  question  which 
he  appears  to  pass  over  as  not  worth  raising? 
May  we  not  ask :  Were  there  objects  in  exist- 
ence, as  described  ?  The  very  stuff  which  enters 
into  their  composition  appears  to  be  of  compara- 


44  THE  NEW  REALISM 

lively  modern  manufacture ;  how  could  they  have 
existed  ? 

Of  course,  one  may  raise  a  somewhat  similar 
question  regarding  those  physical  things  which 
we  do  not  actually  perceive  at  any  given  moment. 
Does  the  other  side  of  the  moon  exist?  The 
words  mean  nothing  except  as  we  bring  in  the 
objective  order  of  phenomena  revealed  in  expe- 
rience, accepting  a  here  and  a  there,  a  system  of 
things  in  space.  And  when  I  ask:  What  was  the 
world  like  before  man  and  his  senses  came  into 
being  ?  my  question  is  wholly  without  significance 
unless  I  accept  a  system  of  things  in  time.  In 
asking  the  question  I  have  tacitly  assumed  that 
it  is  not  mere  noise  to  pronounce  the  word 
"before." 

In  other  words,  I  have  done  exactly  what  is 
done  by  the  plain  man  and  the  man  of  science  — 
I  have  accepted  the  objective  order  of  phenomena, 
the  external  world ;  but  have  found  myself  puzzled 
by  the  fact  that  this  order  is,  in  the  case  in  question, 
expressed  in  certain  terms.  We  have  seen,  how- 
ever, that  it  is  by  no  means  necessary  that  it  should 
be  expressed  in  a  particular  set  of  terms.  This  is 
matter  of  common  experience.  I  may  perceive 
by  sight  a  series  of  changes  which  are  to  me  a 
revelation  of  the  objective  order;  I  may  perceive 
such  by  touch ;  I  may  credit  my  neighbor  with  ex- 
periences of  the  objective  order  different  from  my 
own;    I  may  guess   at  the  experiences  of  lower 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      45 

creatures.  Nevertheless,  I  talk  of  the  one  world; 
I  am  concerned  with  the  one  system ;  I  may  over- 
look the  particular  form  of  the  revelation,  as  it  is 
overlooked,  without  disastrous  results,  in  common 
life  and  in  science. 

When  I  ask  whether  this  or  that  external  thing 
exists,  I  am  not  concerned  primarily  with  my  see- 
ing it  or  with  my  feeling  it,  or  with  the  fact  that 
some  other  creature  may  be  percipient  of  it  under 
some  given  form.  I  am  concerned  with  the  ques- 
tion whether  it  is  to  be  given  a  place  in  the  objective 
order.  There  must,  of  course,  be  evidence  that 
things  are  to  be  assigned  such  a  place,  but  the 
evidence  may  be  of  many  kinds.  Things  which 
are  perceived,  things  which  are  not  perceived, 
things  present,  things  past  and  gone,  may  have 
such  a  place.  This  is  what  men  have  always 
meant  by  external  existence,  and  what  they  have 
instinctively  distinguished  from  mere  perception. 
No  philosopher  can  claim  to  have  discovered  this 
truth;  it  has  always  been  known,  although  men 
embarrassed  with  the  difficulties  of  reflection 
sometimes  misconceive  it. 

Hence,  the  man  of  science  is  entirely  in  the 
right  in  trying  to  give  us  an  account  of  the  past 
in  terms  of  our  experience,  and  in  being  content 
with  that.  If  his  account  is  perfect  in  its  kind, 
it  is  as  true  an  account  as  can  be  given.  To  ask 
for  more  is  to  make  a  preposterous  demand.  He 
who  gives  such  an  account  is  a  realist;    and  the 


46  THE  NEW  REALISM 

philosopher  who  approves  of  his  procedure  is  a 
reahst,  too. 

Still,  it  may  be  insisted,  is  it  not  a  strange  and 
unnatural  doctrine  that  the  world  as  described 
by  the  geologist  really  existed  as  described,  when 
it  is  admitted  that  the  terms  of  the  description 
must  be  recognized  as  related  to  the  senses  of 
man?  What  actually  existed  and  functioned  in 
the  external  world  before  there  were  sensations 
of  color,  of  touch  and  movement,  and  all  the  rest  ? 

He  who  keeps  coming  back  to  this  has  missed 
the  force  of  what  has  been  said  just  above.  He 
finds  it  impossible  to  grasp  what  is  meant  by  the 
word  "existence,"  as  it  is  universally  used  in 
speaking  of  physical  things.  No  man  of  sense, 
in  common  life,  would  repudiate  the  revelations 
of  geology,  and  say  that  it  is  a  better  description 
of  what  existed  in  past  ages  to  call  it  the  unknow- 
able and  the  indescribable.  No  man  of  science 
would  dream  of  doing  this.  Science  concerns 
itself  with  phenomena  and  their  relations,  and 
we  have  no  science  —  we  have  no  knowledge  — 
so  long  as  we  remain  in  the  realm  of  the  unin- 
telligible. Nothing  is  natural  save  nature,  and 
we  know  just  so  much  of  nature  as  is  revealed  to 
us  in  the  phenomena  of  the  objective  and  the  sub- 
jective orders.  It  is  not  unnatural  to  maintain 
that  phenomena  may  have  a  place  in  the  objective 
order,  and  may  be  said  to  exist,  merely  on  that 
account,  and  without  any  reference  to  their  place 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      47 

in  the  subjective  order.  Nor  will  the  doctrine 
seem  stran«:e  to  one  who  has  learned  to  distin- 
guish  clearly  between  the  subjective  and  the  ob- 
jective. He  who  has  not  yet  learned  to  do  this 
will  say  that  the  geologist  "projects"  his  sensations 
into  the  past,  and  will  overlook  the  fact  that,  upon 
his  hypothesis,  there  is  nothing  that  can  properly 
be  called  past. 

One  more  point  I  must  dwell  upon  before 
bringing  this  paper  to  a  close.  In  speaking  of 
"the  new  realism,"  I  have  not  meant  to  defend 
just  one  particular  type  of  doctrine,  but  rather 
to  point  out  what  must  be  admitted  by  any  form 
of   realism    which   would   not   flv    in    the   face   of 

4/ 

certain  rather  palpable  facts. 

I  have  not  dwelt,  in  the  above,  upon  what  I 
may  call  the  intimate  structure  of  experience.  To 
my  mind,  the  phenomena  of  the  two  orders  dis- 
cussed, and  the  relations  which  obtain  between 
them,  are  all  that  we  are  called  upon  to  take  into 
account.  But  there  are  those  who  think  they 
find,  or  must  assume,  in  experience,  something 
very  different  from  phenomena  and  their  rela- 
tions. They  may  distinguish  between  the  phenom- 
ena of  which  we  are  aware  and  the  "awareness," 
co-ordinating  the  latter  with  the  former;  they  may 
claim  that  there  can  be  no  experience  except  as 
we  admit  a  "uniting"  activity  which  knits  phe- 
nomena into  one  whole;  they  may  hold  that  the 
"self"  is  not  to  be  resolved  into  any  collocation 


48  THE  NEW  REALISM 

of  phenomena,  but  is  something  wholly  different, 
and  something  the  functioning  of  which  must  be 
taken  into  account  in  every  discussion  of  our 
knowledge.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  the 
history  of  speculative  thought  will  realize  that 
we  are  here  brought  face  to  face  with  a  tendency 
which  has  assumed  varying  forms,  and  is  strongly 
marked  in  minds  of  a  certain  type,  or  in  those 
which  have  been  subjected  to  certain  influences. 

I  have  no  intention  of  combating  any  of  these 
types  of  doctrine  here.  What  I  wish  to  do  is  to 
point  out  that  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  their 
adherents  from  embracing  a  realistic  doctrine  of 
the  sort  indicated  above.  Why  may  they  not  dis- 
tinguish clearly  between  the  phenomena  of  the 
objective  order  and  those  of  the  subjective  order  ? 
Why  may  they  not  recognize  that,  when  we  refer 
phenomena  to  the  former,  we  do  not  necessarily 
mean  that  anyone  is  perceiving  them  ?  Such  men 
are  usually  idealists,  but  they  are  not  compelled 
to  involve  themselves  in  the  difficulties  which  fol- 
low in  the  train  of  idealism.  If  it  is  possible  for 
a  man  to  be  a  realist  while  admitting  that  the 
geologist's  account  of  past  ages  is  couched  in 
terms  of  our  present  experience,  why  may  they 
not  admit  that  the  physical  world  existed  at  a 
time  when  the  "awareness,"  or  the  "uniting 
activity,"  or  the  "self,"  did  not  exist?  They  have 
only  to  distinguish  clearly  between  the  objective 
order  itself   and   their  assumed   non- phenomenal 


GEORGE   STUART  FULLERTON      49 

entity,  and  to  use  that  order  as  a  framework  for 
the  ordering  of  experience  as  a  whole.  If  they 
do  this,  they  are  doing  what  is  done  in  common 
Hfe  and  in  science  —  they  are  distinguishing  be- 
tween the  existence  of  things  and  our  perception 
of  them.  Without  this  distinction  we  should, 
indeed,  find  it  hard  to  get  on. 


DOES    REALITY    POSSESS    PRACTICAL 
CHARACTER? 


DOES   REALITY   POSSESS   PRACTICAL 
CHARACTER  ? 

By  John  Dewey 

I 

ivECENTLY  I  have  had  an  experience  which, 
insignificant  in  itself,  seems  to  mean  something  as 
an  index-figure  of  the  present  philosophic  situa- 
tion. In  a  criticism  of  the  neo- Kantian  concep- 
tion that  a  'priori  functions  of  thought  are  necessary 
to  constitute  knowledge,  it  became  relevant  to 
deny  its  underlying  postulate:  viz.,  the  existence  of 
anything  properly  called  mental  states  or  subjective 
impressions  precedent  to  all  objective  recognitions, 
and  requiring  accordingly  some  transcendental 
function  to  order  them  into  a  world  of  stable  and 
consistent  reference.  It  was  argued  that  such 
so-called  original  mental  data  are  in  truth  turning 
points  of  the  readjustment,  or  making  over, 
through  a  state  of  incompatibility  and  shock,  of 
objective  affairs.  This  doctrine  was  met  by  the  cry 
of  "subjectivism"!  It  had  seemed  to  its  author 
to  be  a  criticism,  on  grounds  at  once  naturalistic 
and  ethical,  of  the  ground  proposition  of  subjec- 
tivism.    Why  this  diversity  of  interpretations  ?    So 

53 


54  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

far  as  the  ^Titer  can  judge,  it  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  certain  things  characteristic  of  practical  Hfe, 
such  things  as  lack  and  need,  conflict  and  clash, 
desire  and  effort,  loss  and  satisfaction,  had  been 
frankly  referred  to  reality ;  and  to  the  further  fact 
that  the  function  and  structure  of  knowing  were 
systematically  connected  with  these  practical  fea- 
tures. These  conceptions  are  doubtless  radical 
enough ;  the  latter  was  perhaps  more  or  less  revo- 
lutionary. The  probability,  the  antecedent  prob- 
ability, was  that  hostile  critics  would  have  easy 
work  in  pointing  out  specific  errors  of  fact  and 
interpretation.  But  no:  the  simpler,  the  more 
effective  method,  was  to  dismiss  the  whole  thing 
as  anarchic  subjectivism. 

This  was  and  remains  food  for  thought.  I 
have  been  able  to  find  but  one  explanation:  In 
current  philosophy,  everything  of  a  practical 
nature  is  regarded  as  "merely"  personal,  and 
the  "merely"  has  the  force  of  denying  legitimate 
standing  in  the  court  of  cosmic  jurisdiction.  This 
conception  seems  to  me  the  great  and  the  ignored 
assumption  in  contemporary  philosophy:  many 
w^ho  might  shrink  from  the  doctrine  if  expressly 
formulated  hang  desperately  to  its  implications. 
Yet  surely  as  an  underlying  assumption,  it  is 
sheer  prejudice,  a  culture-survival.  If  we  suppose 
the  traditions  of  philosophic  discussion  wiped  out 
and  philosophy  starting  afresh  from  the  most  active 
tendencies  of  to-day,  —  those  striving  in  social  life. 


JOHN  DEWEY  55 

in  science,  in  literature,  and  art,  —  one  can  hardly 
imagine  any  philosophic  view  springing  up  and 
gaining  credence,  which  did  not  give  large  place,  in 
its  scheme  of  things,  to  the  practical  and  personal, 
and  to  them  without  employing  disparaging  terms, 
such  as  phenomenal,  merely  subjective,  and  so  on. 
Why,  putting  it  mildly,  should  what  gives  tragedy, 
comedy,  and  poignancy  to  life,  be  excluded  from 
things  ?  Doubtless,  w^hat  we  call  life,  what  we  take 
to  be  genuinely  vital,  is  not  all  of  things,  but  it  is  a 
part  of  things ;  and  is  that  part  which  counts  most 
with  the  philosopher  —  unless  he  has  quite  parted 
with  his  ancient  dignity  of  lover  of  wisdom. 
What  becomes  of  philosophy  so  far  as  humane 
and  liberal  interests  are  concerned,  if,  in  an  age 
when  the  person  and  the  personal  loom  large  in 
politics,  industry,  religion,  art,  and  science,  it  con- 
tents itself  with  this  parrot  cry  of  phenomenalism, 
whenever  the  personal  comes  into  view  ?  When 
science  is  carried  by  the  idea  of  evolution  into 
introducing  into  the  world  the  principles  of  initia- 
tive, variation,  struggle,  and  selection ;  and  when 
social  forces  have  driven  into  bankruptcy  abso- 
lutistic  and  static  dogmas  as  authorities  for  the 
conduct  of  life,  it  is  trifling  for  philosophy  to  de- 
cline to  look  the  situation  in  the  face.  The  relega- 
tion, as  matter  of  course,  of  need,  of  stress  and 
strain,  strife  and  satisfaction,  to  the  merely  per- 
sonal and  the  merely  personal  to  the  limbo  of 
something  which  is  neither  flesh,  fowl,  nor  good 


56  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

red  herring,  seems  the  thoughtless  rehearsal  of 
ancestral  prejudice. 

When  we  get  beyond  the  echoing  of  tradition, 
the  sticking  point  seems  to  be  the  relation  of 
knowledge  to  the  practical  function  of  things. 
Let  reality  be  in  itself  as  "practical"  as  you 
please,  but  let  not  this  practical  character  lay 
profane  hands  on  the  ark  of  truth.  Every  new 
mode  of  interpreting  life  —  every  new  gospel  — 
is  met  with  the  charge  of  antinomianism.  An  im- 
agination bound  by  custom  apprehends  the  restric- 
tions that  are  relaxed  and  the  checks  that  are 
removed,  but  not  the  inevitable  responsibilities 
and  tests  that  the  new  idea  brings  in.  And  so  the 
conception  that  knowledge  makes  a  difference 
in  and  to  things  looks  licentious  to  those  who  fail 
to  see  that  the  necessity  of  doing  well  this  busi- 
ness, of  making  the  right  difference  puts  intelli- 
gence under  bonds  it  never  yet  has  known :  most 
of  all  in  philosophy,  the  most  gayly  irresponsible 
of  the  procedures,  and  the  most  irresponsively 
sullen,  of  the  historic  fruits  of  intelligence. 

Why  should  the  idea  that  knowledge  makes 
a  difference  to  and  in  things  be  antecedently 
objectionable  ?  If  one  is  already  committed  to 
a  belief  that  Reality  is  neatly  and  finally  tied 
up  in  a  packet  without  loose  ends,  unfinished 
issues  or  new  departures,  one  would  object  to 
knowledge  making  a  difference  just  as  one  would 
object  to  any  other  impertinent  obtruder.     But  if 


JOHN  DEWEY  57 

one  believes  that  the  world  itself  is  in  transforma- 
tion, why  should  the  notion  that  knowledge  is  the 
most  important  mode  of  its  modification  and  the 
only  organ  of  its  guidance  be  a  'priori  obnoxious  ? 

There  is,  I  think,  no  answer  save  that  the 
theory  of  knowledge  has  been  systematically  built 
up  on  the  notion  of  a  static  universe,  so  that  even 
those  who  are  perfectly  free  in  accepting  the  lessons 
of  physics  and  biology  concerning  moving  energy 
and  evolution,  and  of  history  concerning  the 
constant  transformation  of  man's  affairs  (science 
included),  retain  an  unquestioning  belief  in  a 
theory  of  knowledge  which  is  out  of  any  possible 
harmony  with  their  own  theor}^  of  the  matters  to 
be  known.  Modern  epistemology,  having  created 
the  idea  that  the  way  to  frame  right  conceptions 
is  to  analyze  knowledge,  has  strengthened  this 
view.  For  it  at  once  leads  to  the  view  that  realities 
must  themselves  have  a  theoretic  and  intellectual 
complexion  —  not  a  practical  one.  This  view  is 
naturally  congenial  to  idealists ;  but  that  realists 
should  so  readily  play  into  the  hands  of  idealists 
by  asserting  what,  on  the  basis  of  a  formal  theory 
of  knowledge,  realities  must  be,  instead  of  accept- 
ing the  guidance  of  things  in  divining  what  knowl- 
edge is,  is  an  anomaly  so  striking  as  to  support 
the  view  that  the  notion  of  static  reality  has  taken 
its  last  stand  in  ideas  about  knowledge.  Take, 
for  example,  the  most  striking,  because  the  ex- 
treme  case  —  knowledge   of  a  past  event.     It  is 


58  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

absurd  to  suppose  that  knowledge  makes  a  differ- 
ence to  the  final  or  appropriate  content  of  knowl- 
edge: to  the  subject-matter  which  fulfils  the 
requirements  of  knowing.  In  this  case,  it  would 
get  in  its  own  way  and  trip  itself  up  in  endless 
regress.  But  it  seems  the  very  superstition  of 
intellectualism  to  suppose  that  this  fact  about 
knowledge  can  decide  what  is  the  nature  of  that 
reference  to  the  past  which  when  rightly  made  is 
final.  No  doctrine  about  knowledge  can  hinder  the 
belief  —  if  there  be  sufficient  specific  evidence  for 
it  —  that  what  we  know  as  past  may  be  something 
which  has  irretrievably  undergone  just  the  differ- 
ence which  knowledge  makes. 

Now  arguments  against  pragmatism  —  by  which 
I  mean  the  doctrine  that  reality  possesses  practical 
character  and  that  this  character  is  most  eflfica- 
ciously  expressed  in  the  function  of  intelligence  ^  — 
seem  to  fall  blandly  into  this  fallacy.  They  assume 
that  to  hold  that  knowledge  makes  a  difference  in 
existences  is  equivalent  to  holding  that  it  makes  a 
difference  in  the  object  to  be  known,  thus  defeating 
its  own  purpose ;  witless  that  the  reality  which  is  the 
appropriate  object  of  knowledge  in  a  given  case 

^  This  definition,  in  the  present  state  of  discussion,  is  an  arbitrary  or  per- 
eonal  one.  The  text  does  not  mean  that  "  pragmatism  "  is  currently  used 
exclusively  in  this  sense;  obviously  there  are  other  senses.  It  does  not 
mean  it  is  the  sense  in  which  it  ought  to  be  used.  I  have  no  wish  to  legislate 
either  for  language  or  for  philosophy.  But  it  marks  the  sense  in  which  it 
is  used  in  this  paper ;  and  the  pragmatic  movement  is  still  so  loose  and 
variable  that  I  judge  one  has  a  right  to  fix  his  own  meaning,  provided  he 
serves  notice  and  adheres  to  it. 


JOHN  DEWTEY  59 

may  be  precisely  a  reality  in  which  knowing  has 
succeeded  in  making  the  needed  difference.  This 
question  is  not  one  to  be  settled  by  manipulation 
of  the  concept  of  knowledge,  nor  by  dialectic 
discussion  of  its  essence  or  nature.  It  is  a  question 
of  facts,  a  question  of  what  knowing  exists  as  in 
the  scheme  of  existence.  If  things  undergo  change 
without  thereby  ceasing  to  be  real,  there  can  be  no 
formal  bar  to  knowing  being  one  specific  kind  of 
change  in  things,  nor  to  its  test  being  found  in  the 
successful  carrying  into  effect  of  the  kind  of  change 
intended.  If  knowing  be  a  change  in  a  reality, 
then  the  more  knowing  reveals  this  change,  the 
more  transparent,  the  more  adequate,  it  is.  And 
if  all  existences  are  in  transition,  then  the  knowl- 
edge which  treats  them  as  if  they  were  something 
of  which  knowledge  is  a  kodak  fixation  is  just  the 
kind  of  knowledge  which  refracts  and  perverts 
them.  And  by  the  same  token  a  knowing  which 
actively  participates  in  a  change  in  the  way  to 
effect  it  in  the  needed  fashion  would  be  the 
type  of  knowing  which  is  valid.  If  reality  be 
itself  in  transition  —  and  this  doctrine  originated 
not  with  the  objectionable  pragmatist  but  with  the 
physicist  and  naturalist  and  moral  historian  — 
then  the  doctrine  that  knowledge  is  reality  making 
a  particular  and  specified  sort  of  change  in  itself 
seems  to  have  the  best  chance  at  maintaining  a 
theory  of  knowing  which  itself  is  in  wholesome 
touch  with  the  genuine  and  valid. 


60  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 


II 

If  the  ground  be  cleared  of  a  priori  objections, 
and  if  it  be  evident  that  pragmatism  cannot  be 
disposed  of  by  any  formal  or  dialectic  manipu- 
lations of  "knowledge"  or  "truth,"  but  only  by 
showing  that  some  specific  things  are  not  of  the 
sort  claimed,  we  may  consider  some  common  sense 
affiliations  of  pragmatism.  Common  sense  regards 
intelligence  as  having  a  purpose  and  knowledge  as 
amounting  to  something.  I  once  heard  a  physicist, 
quite  innocent  of  the  pragmatic  controversy, 
remark  that  the  knowledge  of  a  mechanic  or 
farmer  was  what  the  Yankee  calls  gumption  — 
acknowledgment  of  things  in  their  belongings  and 
uses,  and  that  to  his  mind  natural  science  was  only 
gumption  on  a  larger  scale:  the  convenient  cata- 
loguing and  arranging  of  a  whole  lot  of  things  with 
reference  to  their  most  efficacious  services.  Popu- 
larly, good  judgment  is  judgment  as  to  the  relative 
values  of  things :  good  sense  is  horse  sense,  ability 
to  take  hold  of  things  right  end  up,  to  fit  an  instru- 
ment to  an  obstacle,  to  select  resources  apt  for  a 
task.  To  be  reasonable  is  to  recognize  things  in 
their  offices  as  obstacles  and  as  resources.  Intelli- 
gence, in  its  ordinary  use,  is  a  practical  term ; 
ability  to  size  up  matters  with  respect  to  the  needs 
and  possibilities  of  the  various  situations  in  which 
one  is  called  to  do  something;    capacity  to  en- 


JOHN  DEWEY  61 

visage  things  in  terms  of  the  adjustments  and 
adaptations  they  make  possible  or  hinder.  Our 
objective  test  of  the  presence  or  absence  of  inteUi- 
gence  is  influence  upon  behavior.  No  capacity  to 
make  adjustments  means  no  inteUigence;  con- 
duct evincing  management  of  complex  and  novel 
conditions  means  a  high  degree  of  reason.  Such 
conditions  at  least  suggest  that  a  reality- to-be- 
known,  a  reality  which  is  the  appropriate  subject- 
matter  of  knowledge  is  reality-of-use-and-in-use, 
direct  or  indirect,  and  that  a  reality  which  is  not 
in  any  sort  of  use,  or  bearing  upon  use,  may  go 
hang,  so  far  as  knowledge  is  concerned. 

No  one,  I  suppose,  would  deny  that  all  knowl- 
edge issues  in  some  action  which  changes  things 
to  some  extent  —  be  the  action  only  a  more  delib- 
erate maintenance  of  a  course  of  conduct  already 
instinctively  entered  upon.  When  I  see  a  sign  on 
the  street  corner  I  can  turn  or  go  on,  knowing 
what  I  am  about.  The  perceptions  of  the  scientist 
need  have  no  such  overt  or  "utilitarian"  uses, 
but  surely  after  them  he  behaves  difterently,  as 
an  inquirer  if  in  no  other  way ;  and  the  cumu- 
lative effect  of  such  changes  finally  modifies  the 
overt  action  of  the  ordinary  man.  That  knowing, 
after  the  event,  makes  a  difference  of  this  sort,  few 
I  suppose  would  deny :  if  that  were  all  pragmatism 
means,  it  would  perhaps  be  accepted  as  a  harmless 
truism.  But  there  is  a  further  question  of  fact: 
just   how   is  the  "consequent"  action   related   to 


62  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

the  "precedent"  knowledge?  When  is  "after  the 
event"?  What  degree  of  continuity  exists?  Is 
the  difference  between  knowing  and  acting  intelli- 
gently one  of  kind  or  simply  one  of  dominant 
quality  ?  How  does  a  thing,  if  it  is  not  already  in 
change  in  the  knowing,  manage  to  issue  at  its  term 
in  action  ?  Moreover,  do  not  the  changes  actively 
effected  constitute  the  whole  import  of  the  knowl- 
edge, and  hence  its  final  measure  and  test  of 
validity  ?  If  it  merely  happens  that  knowing  when 
it  is  done  with  passes  into  some  action,  by  what 
miracle  is  the  subsequent  action  so  pat  to  the 
situation?  Is  it  not  rather  true  that  the  "knowl- 
edge" is  instituted  and  framed  in  anticipation  of 
the  consequent  issue,  and,  in  the  degree  in  which 
it  is  wise  and  prudent,  is  held  open  to  revision 
during  it?  Certainly  the  moralist  (one  might 
quote,  for  example,  Goethe,  Carlyle,  and  Mazzini) 
and  the  common  man  often  agree  that  full  knowl- 
edge, adequate  assurance,  of  reality  is  found  only 
in  the  issue  which  fulfils  ideas ;  that  we  have 
to  do  a  doctrine  to  know  its  truth;  otherwise  it 
is  only  dogma  or  doctrinaire  "programme.  Experi- 
mental science  is  a  recognition  that  no  idea  is 
entitled  to  be  termed  knowledge  till  it  has  passed 
into  such  overt  manipulation  of  physical  conditions 
as  constructs  the  object  to  which  the  idea  refers. 
If  one  could  get  rid  of  his  traditional  logical 
theories  and  set  to  work  afresh  to  frame  a  theory 
of  knowledge  on  the  basis  of  the  procedure  of  the 


JOHN  DE\\:EY  63 

common  man,  the  moralist  and  the  experimentalist, 
would  it  be  the  forced  or  the  natural  procedure  to 
say  that  the  realities  which  we  know,  which  we  are 
sure  of,  are  precisely  those  realities  that  have  taken 
shape  in  and  through  the  procedures  of  knowing  ? 
I  turn  to  another  type  of  consideration.  Cer- 
tainly one  of  the  most  genuine  problems  of  modern 
life  is  the  reconciliation  of  the  scientific  view  of 
the  universe  with  the  claims  of  the  moral  life. 
Are  judgments  in  terms  of  the  redistribution  of 
matter  in  motion  (or  some  other  closed  formula) 
alone  valid  ?  Or  are  accounts  of  the  universe  in 
terms  of  possibility  and  desirability,  of  initiative 
and  responsibility,  also  valid .?  There  is  no  oc- 
casion to  expatiate  on  the  importance  of  the 
moral  life,  nor  upon  the  supreme  importance  of 
intelligence  within  the  moral  life.  But  there  does 
seem  to  be  occasion  for  asking  how  moral  judg- 
ments —  judgments  of  the  would  and  should  —  re- 
late themselves  to  the  world  of  scientific  knowledge. 
To  frame  a  theory  of  knowledge  which  makes  it 
necessary  to  deny  the  validity  of  moral  ideas,  or 
else  to  refer  them  to  some  other  and  separate  kind 
of  universe  from  that  of  common  sense  and  science, 
is  both  provincial  and  arbitrary.  The  pragmatist 
has  at  least  tried  to  face,  and  not  to  dodge,  the 
question  of  how  it  is  that  moral  and  scientific 
"knowledge"  can  both  hold  of  one  and  the 
same  world.  And  whatever  the  difficulties  in  his 
proffered   solution,  the   conception  that    scientific 


64  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

judgments  are  to  be  assimilated  to  moral  is  closer 
to  common  sense  than  is  the  theory  that  validity 
is  to  be  denied  of  moral  judgments  because  they 
do  not  square  with  a  preconceived  theory  of  the 
nature  of  the  world  to  which  scientific  judgments 
must  refer.  And  all  moral  judgments  are  about 
changes  to  be  made. 

Ill 

I  turn  to  one  aflSliation  of  the  pragmatic  theory 
with  the  results  of  recent  science.  The  necessity 
for  the  occurrence  of  an  event  in  the  way  of  knowl- 
edge, of  an  organism  which  reacts  or  behaves  in  a 
specific  way,  would  seem  to  be  as  well  established 
as  any  scientific  proposition.  It  is  a  peculiar 
fact,  a  fact  fit  to  stir  curiosity,  that  the  rational 
function  seems  to  be  intercalated  in  a  scheme  of 
practical  adjustments.  The  parts  and  members 
of  the  organism  are  certainly  not  there  primarily 
for  pure  intellection  or  for  theoretic  contempla- 
tion. The  brain,  the  last  physical  organ  of  thought, 
is  a  part  of  the  same  practical  machinery  for 
bringing  about  adaptation  of  the  environment 
to  the  life  requirements  of  the  organism,  to  which 
belong  legs  and  hand  and  eye.  That  the  brain  frees 
organic  behavior  from  complete  servitude  to  im- 
mediate physical  conditions,  that  it  makes  possible 
the  liberation  of  energy  for  remote  and  ever  ex- 
panding ends  is,  indeed,  a  precious  fact,  but  not 


JOHN  DEWEY  65 

one  which  removes  the  brain  from  the  category 
of  organic  devices  of  behavior/  That  the  organ 
of  thinking,  of  knowledge,  was  at  least  originally 
an  organ  of  conduct,  few,  I  imagine,  will  deny. 
And  even  if  we  try  to  believe  that  the  cognitive 
function  has  supervened  as  a  different  operation, 
it  is  diflficult  to  believe  that  the  transfiguration 
has  been  so  radical  that  knowing  has  lost  all 
traces  of  its  connection  with  vital  impulse.  But 
unless  we  so  assume,  have  we  any  alternatives 
except  to  hold  that  this  continual  presence  of  vital 
impulse  is  a  disturbing  and  refracting  factor  which 
forever  prevents  knowledge  from  reaching  its  own 
aim;  or  else  that  a  certain  promoting,  a  certain 
carrying  forward  of  the  vital  impulse,  importing  cer- 
tain differences  in  things,  i^  the  aim  of  knowledge  ? 
The  problem  cannot  be  evaded  —  save  ostrich 
wise  —  by  saying  that  such  considerations  are 
*' merely  genetic,"  or  "psychological,"  having  to 
do  only  with  the  origin  and  natural  history  of 
knowing.  For  the  point  is  that  the  organic  reac- 
tion, the  behavior  of  the  organism,  affects  the 
content  of  awareness.  The  subject-matter  of  all 
awareness  is  thing-related- to-organism  —  related 
as  stimulus  direct  or  indirect  or  as  material  of 
response,  present  or  remote,  ulterior  or  achieved. 

'  It  is  interesting  to  note  how  the  metaphysical  puzzles  regarding  "  paral- 
lelism," "interaction,"  "automatism,"  the  relation  of  "consciousness"  to 
"body,"  evaporate  when  one  ceases  isolating  the  brain  into  a  peculiar  physical 
substrate  of  mind  at  large,  and  treats  it  simply  as  one  portion  of  the  body  as 
the  instrumentality  of  adaptive  beha\'ior. 

5 


66  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

No  one  —  so  far  as  I  know  —  denies  this  with  re- 
spect to  the  perceptual  field  of  awareness.  Pains, 
pleasures,  hunger,  and  thirst,  all  "secondary" 
qualities,  involve  inextricably  the  "interaction"  of 
organism  and  environment.  The  perceptual  field 
is  distributed  and  arranged  as  the  possible  field 
of  selective  reactions  of  the  organism  at  its  centre. 
Up  and  down,  far  and  near,  before  and  behind, 
right  and  left,  hard  and  soft  (as  well  as  white  and 
black,  bass  and  alto),  involve  reference  to  a  centre 
of  behavior. 

This  material  has  so  long  been  the  stock  in  trade 
of  both  idealistic  arguments  and  proclamations 
of  the  agnostic  "relativity"  of  knowledge  that 
philosophers  have  grown  aweary  of  listening. 
But  even  this  lethargy  might  be  quickened  by  a 
moderate  hospitality  to  the  pragmatic  interpre- 
tation. That  red,  or  far  and  near,  or  hard  and 
soft,  or  big  and  little,  involve  a  relation  between 
organism  and  environment,  is  no  more  an  argu- 
ment for  idealism  than  is  the  fact  that  water  in- 
volves a  relation  between  hydrogen  and  oxygen.* 
It  is,  however,  an  argument  for  the  ultimately 
practical  value  of  these  distinctions  —  that  they  are 
differences  made  in  what  things  would  have  been 
without  organic  behavior  —  differences  made  not 
by  "consciousness"  or  "mind,"  but  by  the  organ- 
ism as  the  active  centre  of  a  system  of  activities. 
Moreover,  the  whole  agnostic  sting  of  the  doctrine 

*  I  owe  this  illustration  to  my  colleague,  Dr.  Montague. 


JOHN  DEWEY  67 

of  "relativity"  lies  in  the  assumption  that  the 
ideal  or  aim  of  knowledge  is  to  repeat  or  copy  a 
prior  existence  —  in  which  case,  of  course,  the 
making  of  contemporaneous  differences  by  the 
organism  in  the  very  fact  of  awareness  would  get 
in  the  w^ay  and  forever  hinder  the  knowledge  func- 
tion from  the  fulfilment  of  its  proper  end. 
Knowledge,  awareness,  in  this  case  suffers  from 
an  impediment  which  no  surgery  can  better.  But 
if  the  aim  of  knowing  be  precisely  to  make  cer- 
tain differences  in  an  environment,  to  carry  on  to 
favorable  issue,  by  the  readjustment  of  the  organ- 
ism, certain  changes  going  on  indifferently  in  the 
environment,  then  the  fact  that  the  changes  of  the 
organism  enter  pervasively  into  the  subject-matter 
of  awareness  is  no  restriction  or  perversion  of 
knowledge,  but  part  of  the  fulfilment  of  its  end. 

The  only  question  would  then  be  whether  the 
proper  reactions  take  place.  The  whole  agnostic, 
positivistic  controversy  is  flanked  by  a  single  move. 
The  issue  is  no  longer  an  ideally  necessary  but 
actually  impossible  copying,  versus  an  improper 
but  unavoidable  modification  of  reality  through 
organic  inhibitions  and  stimulations :  but  it  is  the 
right,  the  economical,  the  effective,  and,  if  one 
may  venture,  the  useful  and  satisfactory  reaction 
versus  the  wasteful,  the  enslaving,  the  misleading, 
and  the  confusing  reaction.  The  presence  of 
organic  responses,  influencing  and  modifying  every 
content,  every  subject-matter  of  awareness,  is  the 


68  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

undoubted  fact.  But  the  significant  thing  is  the 
way  organic  behavior  enters  in  —  the  way  it 
influences  and  modifies.  We  assign  very  different 
values  to  different  types  of  **  knowledge,"  —  or 
subject-matters  involving  organic  attitudes  and 
operations.  Some  are  only  guesses,  opinions,  sus- 
picious characters;  others  are  "knowledge"  in  the 
honorific  and  eulogistic  sense  —  science ;  some  turn 
out  mistakes,  blunders,  errors.  Whence  and  how 
this  discrimination  of  character  in  what  is  taken  at 
its  own  time  to  be  good  knowledge  }  Why  and  how 
is  the  matter  of  some  "knowledge"  genuine-know- 
ing and  of  other  mis-knowing  }  Awareness  is  itself 
a  blanket  term,  covering,  in  the  same  bed,  delusion, 
doubt,  confusion,  ambiguity,  and  definition,  or- 
ganization, logical  conclusiveness  assured  by  evi- 
dence and  reason.  Any  naturalistic  or  realistic 
theory  is  committed  to  the  idea  that  all  of  these 
terms  bear  impartially  the  same  relation  to  things 
considered  as  sheer  existences.  Wliat  we  must 
have  in  any  case  is  the  same  existences  —  the 
same  in  kind  —  only  differently  arranged  or  linked 
up.  But  why  then  the  tremendous  difference  in 
value  ?  And  if  the  unnaturalist,  the  non-realist, 
says  the  difference  is  one  of  existential  kind,  made 
by  the  working  here  malign,  there  benign,  of  "  con- 
sciousness," "psychical"  operations  and  states, 
upon  the  existences  which  are  the  direct  subject- 
matter  of  knowledge,  there  is  still  the  problem  of 
discriminating  the  conditions  and  nature  of  the 


JOHN  DEWEY  69 

respective  beneficent  and  malicious  interventions 
of  the  peculiar  "existence"  labelled  consciouness/ 
The  realness  of  error,  ambiguity,  doubt  and  guess 
poses  a  problem.  It  is  a  problem  which  has  per- 
plexed philosophy  so  long  and  has  led  to  so  many 
speculative  adventures,  that  it  would  seem  worth 
while,  were  it  only  for  the  sake  of  variety,  to  listen 
to  the  pragmatic  solution.  It  is  the  business  of 
that  organic  adaptation  involved  in  all  knowing 
to  make  a  certain  difference  in  reality,  but  not 
to  make  any  old  difference,  any  casual  difference. 
The  right,  the  true  and  good,  difference  is  that 
which  carries  out  satisfactorily  the  specific  pur- 
pose for  the  sake  of  which  knowing  occurs.  All 
manufactures  are  the  product  of  an  activity,  but  it 
does  not  follow  that  all  manufactures  are  equally 
good.  And  so  all  "knowledges"  are  differences 
made  in  things  by  knowing,  but  some  differences 
are  not  calculated  or  wanted  in  the  knowing,  and 
hence  are  disturbers  and  interlopers  when  they 
come  —  while  others  fulfil  the  intent  of  the  know- 
ing, being  in  such  harmony  with  the  consistent 
behavior  of  the  organism  as  to  reinforce  and  en- 
large its  functioning.  A  mistake  is  literally  a 
mishandling;  a  doubt  is  a  temporary  suspense 
and  vacillation  of  reactions ;  an  ambiguity  is  the 
tension  of  alternative  but  incompatible  mode  of 

'  Of  course  on  the  theory  I  am  interested  in  expounding,  the  so-called 
action  of  "consciousness"  means  simply  the  organic  releases  in  the  way 
of  behavior  which  are  the  conditions  of  awareness,  and  which  also  modify 
its  content. 


70  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

responsive  treatment;  an  inquiry  is  a  tentative 
and  retrievable  (because  intra-organic)  mode  of 
activity  entered  upon  prior  to  launching  upon  a 
knowledge  which  is  public,  ineluctable  —  without 
anchors  to  windward  —  because  it  has  taken  phys- 
ical effect  through  overt  action. 

It  is  practically  all  one  to  say  that  the  norm 
of  honorable  knowing  is  to  make  no  difference 
in  its  object,  and  that  its  aim  is  to  attain  and 
buttress  a  specific  kind  of  difference  in  reality. 
Knowing  fails  in  its  business  if  it  makes  a  change 
in  its  own  object  —  that  is  a  mistake ;  but  its  own 
object  is  none  the  less  a  prior  existence  changed  in 
a  certain  way.  Nor  is  this  a  play  upon  the  two 
senses — end  and  subject-matter  —  of  "object." 
The  organism  has  its  appropriate  functions.  To 
maintain,  to  expand  adequate  functioning  is  its 
business.  This  functioning  does  not  occur  in 
vacuo.  It  involves  co-operative  and  readjusted 
changes  in  the  cosmic  medium.  Hence  the  appro- 
priate subject-matter  of  awareness  is  not  reality  at 
large,  a  metaphysical  heaven  to  be  mimeographed 
at  many  removes  upon  a  badly  constructed  mental 
carbon  paper  which  yields  at  best  only  fragmentary, 
blurred,  and  erroneous  copies.  Its  proper  and 
legitimate  object  is  that  relationship  of  organism 
and  environment  in  which  functioning  is  most 
amply  and  effectively  attained;  or  by  which,  in 
case  of  obstruction  and  consequent  needed  ex- 
perimentation,   its    later   eventual   free    course   is 


JOHN  DEWEY  71 

most  facilitated.  As  for  the  other  reaUty,  meta- 
physical reality  at  large,  it  may,  so  far  as  aware- 
ness  is  concerned,  go  to  its  own  place. 

For  ordinary  purposes,  that  is  for  practical 
purposes,  the  truth  and  the  realness  of  things 
are  synonymous.  We  are  all  children  who  say 
"really  and  truly."  A  reality  which  is  so  taken 
in  organic  response  as  to  lead  to  subsequent  re- 
actions that  are  off  the  track  and  aside  from 
the  mark,  while  it  is,  existentially  speaking,  per- 
fectly real,  is  not  good  reality.  It  lacks  the  hall- 
mark of  value.  Since  it  is  a  certain  kind  of 
object  which  we  want,  that  which  will  be  as 
favorable  as  possible  to  a  consistent  and  liberal 
or  growing  functioning,  it  is  this  kind,  the  true 
kind,  which  for  us  monopolizes  the  title  of 
reality.  Pragmatically,  teleologically,  this  iden- 
tification of  truth  and  "reality  "  is  sound  and  rea- 
sonable :  rationalistically,  it  leads  to  the  notion 
of  the  duplicate  versions  of  reality,  one  absolute 
and  static  because  exhausted ;  the  other  phenom- 
enal and  kept  continually  on  the  jump  because 
otherwise  its  own  inherent  nothingness  w'ould 
lead  to  its  total  annihilation.  Since  it  is  only 
genuine  or  sincere  things,  things  which  are  good 
for  what  they  pretend  to  in  the  way  of  con- 
sequences, that  w^e  want  or  are  after,  morally  they 
alone  are  "  real." 


72  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 


IV 

So  far  we  have  been  dealing  with  awareness 
as  a  fact  —  a  fact  there  Hke  any  fact  —  and  have 
been  concerned  to  show  that  the  subject-matter 
of  awareness  is,  in  any  case,  things  in  process 
of  change;  and  in  such  change  that  the  knowing 
function  takes  a  hand  in  trying  to  guide  it  or 
steer  it,  so  that  some  (and  not  other)  differences 
accrue.  But  what  about  the  awareness  itself  ? 
What  happens  when  it  is  made  the  subject- 
matter  of  awareness  ?  What  sort  of  a  thing  is 
it?  It  is,  I  submit,  mere  sophistication  (futile 
at  that),  to  argue  either  that  we  cannot  become 
aware  of  awareness  without  involving  ourselves 
in  an  endless  regress,  or  that  whenever  we  are 
aware  of  anything  we  are  thereby  necessarily 
aware  of  awareness  once  for  all,  so  that  it  has  no 
character  save  this  purely  formal  and  empty  one. 
Taken  concretely,  awareness  is  an  event  with 
certain  specifiable  conditions.  We  may  indeed 
be  aware  of  it  formally,  as  a  bare  fact,  just  as  we 
may  be  cognizant  of  an  explosion  without  know- 
ing anything  of  its  nature.  But  we  may  also  be 
aware  of  it  in  a  curious  and  analytic  spirit,  under- 
taking to  study  it  in  detail.  This  inquiry,  like 
any  other  inquiry,  proceeds  by  determining  con- 
ditions and  consequences.  Here  awareness  is 
a  characteristic  fact,  presenting  to  inquiry  its  own 


JOHN  DEWEY  73 

characteristic  ear-marks ;  and  a  valid  knowledge 
of  awareness  is  the  same  sort  of  thing  as  valid 
knowledge  of  the  spectrum  or  of  a  trotting  horse; 
it  proceeds  generically  in  the  same  way  and 
must   satisfy    the   same   generic   tests. 

What,  then,  is  awareness  found  to  be  ?  The 
following  answer,  dogmatically  summary  in  form, 
involves  positive  difficulties,  and  glides  over  many 
points  where  our  ignorance  is  still  too  great. 
But  it  represents  a  general  trend  of  scientific  in- 
quiry, carried  on,  I  hardly  need  say,  on  its  ow^n 
merits  without  respect  to  the  pragmatic  contro- 
versy. Awareness  means  attention,  and  attention 
means  a  crisis  of  some  sort  in  an  existent  situa- 
tion; a  forking  of  the  roads  of  some  material,  a 
tendency  to  go  this  w^ay  and  that.  It  represents 
something  the  matter,  something  out  of  gear,  or 
in  some  way  menaced,  insecure,  problematical  and 
strained.  This  state  of  tension,  of  ambiguous 
indications,  projects  and  tendencies,  is  not  merely 
in  the  "mind,"  it  is  nothing  merely  emotional.  It 
is  in  the  facts  of  the  situation  as  transitive  facts ; 
the  emotional  or  "subjective"  disturbance  is 
just  a  part  of  the  larger  disturbance.  And  if, 
employing  the  language  of  psychology,  we  say 
that  attention  is  a  phenomenon  of  conflicting 
habits,  being  the  process  of  resolving  this  con- 
flict by  finding  an  act  which  functions  all  the 
factors  concerned,  this  language  does  not  make 
the  facts  "merely  psychological"  —  whatever  that 


74  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

means.*  The  habits  are  as  biologic  as  they  are 
"personal,"  and  as  cosmic  as  they  are  biologic. 
They  are  the  total  order  of  things  expressed  in  one 
way;  just  as  a  physical  or  chemical  phenomenon 
is  the  same  order  expressed  in  another  way.  The 
statement  in  terms  of  conflict  and  readjustment 
of  habits  is  at  most  one  way  of  locating  the  dis- 
turbance in  things;  it  furnishes  no  substitute  for, 
or  rival  of,  reality,  and  no  "psychical"  duplication. 

If  this  be  true,  then  awareness,  even  in  its  most 
perplexed  and  confused  state,  a  state  of  maximum 
doubt  and  precariousness  of  subject-matter,  means 
things  entering,  via  the  particular  thing  known 
as  organism,  into  a  peculiar  condition  of  differ- 
ential —  or  additive  —  change.  How  can  we  re- 
fuse to  raise  and  consider  the  question  of  how 
things  in  this  condition  are  related  to  the  prior 
state  which  emerges  into  it,  and  to  the  subsequent 
state  of  things  into  which  it  issues  ?''' 

Suppose  the  case  to  be  awareness  of  a  chair. 
Suppose  that  this  awareness  comes  only  when 
there  is  some   problematic   affair  with  which  the 

*  What  does  it  mean  ?  Does  the  objectivity  of  fact  disappear  when  the 
biologist  gives  it  a  biological  statement  ?  Why  not  object  to  his  conclusions 
on  the  ground  that  they  are  "merely"  biological? 

^  It  is  this  question  0/  live  relation  to  one  otfier  of  difjerent  successive  states  of 
things  which  the  pragmatic  method  substitutes  for  the  epistemological 
inquiry  of  how  one  sort  of  existence,  purely  mental,  temporal  but  not  spatial, 
immaterial,  made  up  of  sublimated  gaseous  consciousness,  can  get  beyond 
itself  and  have  vaUd  reference  to  a  totally  different  kind  of  existence  — • 
spatial  and  extended ;  and  how  it  can  receive  impressions  from  the  latter,  etc., 
—  all  the  questions  which  constitute  that  species  of  confirmed  intellectual 
lock-jaw  called  epistemology. 


JOHN  DEWEY  75 

chair  is  in  some  way  —  in  whatever  degree  of 
remoteness  —  concerned.  It  may  be  a  wonder 
whether  that  is  a  chair  at  all;  or  whether  it  is 
strong  enough  to  stand  on;  or  where  I  shall  put 
it;  or  whether  it  is  worth  what  I  paid  for  it;  or, 
as  not  infrequently  happens,  the  situation  in- 
volved in  uncertainty  may  be  some  philosophic 
matter  in  which  the  perception  of  the  chair  is 
cited  as  evidence  or  illustration.  (Humorously 
enough,  the  awareness  of  it  may  even  be  cited 
in  the  course  of  a  philosophic  argument  intended 
to  show  that  awareness  has  nothing  to  do  with 
situations  of  incompleteness  and  ambiguity.) 
Now  what  of  the  change  the  chair  undergoes  in 
entering  this  way  into  a  situation  of  perplexed 
inquiry  ?  Is  this  any  part  of  the  genuineness  of 
that  chair  with  which  we  are  concerned  ?  If  not, 
where  is  the  change  found  ?  In  something  totally 
different  called  "consciousness".^  In  that  case 
how  can  the  operations  of  inquirv,  of  observation 
and  memory  and  reflection,  ever  have  any  assur- 
ance of  getting  referred  back  to  the  right  object  ? 
Positively  the  presumption  is  that  the  chair-of- 
which-we-are-speaking,  is  the  chair  oj-which-we 
are- speaking;  it  is  the  same  thing  that  is  out  there 
which  is  involved  also  in  the  doubtful  situa- 
tion. Moreover,  the  reference  to  "consciousness" 
as  the  exclusive  locus  of  the  doubt  only  repeats 
the  problem,  for  "consciousness,"  by  the  theory 
under   consideration,  means,    after    all,    only    tlie 


76  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

chair  as  concerned  in  the  problematical  situation. 
The  physical  chair  remains  unchanged,  you  say. 
Surely,  if  as  is  altogether  likely,  what  is  meant 
by  physical  is  precisely  that  part  of  the  chair  as 
object  of  total  awareness  which  remains  unaf- 
fected, for  certain  possible  purposes,  by  entering 
for  certain  other  actual  purposes  into  the  situa- 
tion of  awareness.  But  how  can  we  segregate, 
antecedently  to  experimental  inquiry,  the  "  physical " 
chair  from  the  chair  which  is  now  the  object  to  be 
known;  into  what  contradictions  do  we  fall  when 
we  attempt  to  define  the  object  of  one  awareness 
not  in  its  own  terms,  but  in  terms  of  a  selected 
type  of  object  which  is  the  appropriate  subject- 
matter  of  some  other  cognizance ! 

But  awareness  means  inquiry  as  well  as  doubt  — 
these  are  the  negative  and  positive,  the  retro- 
spective and  the  prospective  relationships  of  the 
thing.  This  means  a  genuinely  additive  quale  — 
one  of  readjustment  in  prior  things.^  I  know 
the  dialectic  argument  that  nothing  can  assume 
a  new  relation,  because  in  order  to  do  so  it  must 
already  be  completely  related  —  when  it  comes 
from  an  absolutist  I  can  understand  why  he 
holds  it,  even  if  I  cannot  understand  the  idea 
itself.  But  apart  from  this  conceptual  reasoning 
we  must  follow  the  lead  of  our  subject-matter; 
and  when  we  find  a  thing  assuming  new  relations 

*  We  have  arrived  here,  upon  a  more  analytic  platform,  at  the  point  made 
earlier  concerning  the  fact  that  knowing  issues  in  action  which  changes 
things. 


JOHN  DEWEY  77 

in  the  process  of  inquiry,  must  accept  the  fact  and 
frame  our  theory  of  things  and  of  knowing  to 
include  it,  not  assert  that  it  is  impossible  because 
we  already  have  a  theory  of  knowledge  which 
precludes  it.  In  inquiry,  the  existence  which  has 
become  doubtful  always  undergoes  experimental 
reconstruction.  This  may  be  largely  imaginative  or 
"speculative."  We  may  view  certain  things  as  if 
placed  under  varying  conditions,  and  consider  what 
then  happens  to  them.  But  such  differences  are 
really  transformative  so  far  as  they  go,  —  and 
besides,  such  inquiries  never  reach  conclusions 
finally  justifiable.  In  important  and  persistent 
inquiry,  we  insist  upon  something  in  the  way  of 
actual  physical  making  —  be  it  only  a  diagram. 
In  other  words,  science,  or  knowing  in  its  honorific 
sense,  is  experimental,  involving  physical  construc- 
tion. We  insist  upon  something  being  done  about 
it,  that  we  may  see  how  the  idea  when  carried 
into  effect  comports  with  the  other  things  through 
which  our  activities  are  hedged  in  and  released. 
To  avoid  this  conclusion  by  saying  that  knowing 
makes  no  difference  in  the  "truth,"  but  merely  is 
the  preliminary  exercise  w^hich  discovers  it,  is  that 
old  friend  whose  acquaintance  we  have  repeatedly 
made  in  this  discussion:  the  fallacy  of  confusing 
an  existence  anteceding  knowing  wuth  the  object 
which  terminates  and  fulfils  it.  For  knowing  to 
make  a  difference  in  its  own  final  term  is  gross 
self-stultification;    it   is   none    the    less    so   when 


78  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

the  aim  of  knowing  is  precisely  to  guide  things 
straight  up  to  this  term.  When  "  truth  "  means  the 
accompHshed  introduction  of  certain  new  differ- 
ences into  conditions,  why  be  fooHsh  enough  to 
make  other  and  more  differences,  which  are  not 
wanted  since  they  are  irrelevant  and  misleading  ? 

Were  it  not  for  the  teachings  of  sad  experience, 
it  would  not  be  necessary  to  add  that  the  change  in 
environment  made  by  knowing  is  not  a  total  or  mi- 
raculous change.  Transformation,  readjustment, 
reconstruction  all  imply  prior  existences  :  existences 
which  have  characters  and  behaviors  of  their 
own  which  must  be  accepted,  consulted,  humored, 
manipulated  or  made  light  of,  in  all  kinds  of 
differing  ways  in  the  different  contexts  of  different 
problems.  Making  a  difference  in  reality  does  not 
mean  making  any  more  difference  than  we  find 
by  experimentation  can  be  made  under  the  given 
conditions  —  even  though  we  may  still  hope  for 
different  fortune  another  time  under  other  cir- 
cumstances. Still  less  does  it  mean  making  a  thing 
into  an  unreality,  though  the  pragmatist  is  some- 
times criticised  as  if  any  change  in  reality  must  be 
a  change  into  non-reality.  There  are  diflficulties  in- 
deed, both  dialectic,  and  real  or  practical,  in  the  fact 
of  change  —  in  the  fact  that  only  a  permanent  can 
change  and  that  change  is  alteration  of  a  perma- 
nent. But  till  we  enjoin  botanists  and  chemists 
from  referring  to  changes  and  transformations  in 
their  subject-matter  on  the  ground  that  for  any- 


JOHN   DEWEY  79 

thing  to  change  means  for  it  to  part  with  its 
reaUty,  we  may  as  well  permit  the  logician  to 
make  similar  references. 


V 

Sub  specie  aeternitatis  ?  or  sub  specie  genera- 
tionis  ?  I  am  susceptible  to  the  aesthetic  charm  of 
the  former  ideal  —  who  is  not  ?  There  are  moments 
of  relaxation :  there  are  moments  when  the  demand 
for  peace,  to  be  let  alone  and  relieved  from  the 
continual  claim  of  the  world  in  which  we  live  that 
we  be  up  and  doing  something  about  it,  seems 
irresistible;  when  the  responsibilities  imposed  by 
living  in  a  moving  universe  seem  intolerable.  We 
contemplate  with  equal  mind  the  thought  of  the 
eternal  sleep.  But,  after  all,  this  is  a  matter  in 
which  reality  and  not  the  philosopher  is  the  court 
of  final  jurisdiction.  Outside  of  philosophy,  the 
question  seems  fairly  settled ;  in  science,  in  poetry, 
in  social  organization,  in  religion  —  wherever  reli- 
gion is  not  hopelessly  at  the  mercy  of  a  Frank- 
enstein philosophy  which  it  originally  called  into 
being  as  its  own  slave.  Under  such  circumstances 
there  is  danger  that  the  philosophy  which  tries  to 
escape  the  form  of  generation  by  taking  refuge 
under  the  form  of  eternity  will  only  come  under 
the  form  of  a  by-gone  generation.  To  try  to 
escape  from  the  snares  and  pitfalls  of  time  by 
recourse    to    traditional    problems    and    interests 


80  REALITY  AS  PRACTICAL 

—  rather  than  that  let  the  dead  bury  their  own 
dead.  Better  it  is  for  philosophy  to  err  in  active 
participation  in  the  living  struggles  and  issues  of 
its  own  age  and  times  than  to  maintain  an  immune 
monastic  impeccability,  without  relevancy  and 
bearing  in  the  generating  ideas  of  its  contemporary 
present.  In  the  one  case,  it  will  be  respected,  as 
we  respect  all  virtue  that  attests  its  sincerity  by 
sharing  in  the  perplexities  and  failures,  as  well  as 
in  the  joys  and  triumphs,  of  endeavor.  In  the 
other  case,  it  bids  fair  to  share  the  fate  of  what- 
ever preserves  its  gentility,  but  not  its  activity, 
in  descent  from  better  days;  namely,  to  be 
snugly  ensconced  in  the  consciousness  of  its  own 
respectability. 


A  FACTOR  IN  THE   GENESIS  OF 
IDEALISM 


A  FACTOR  IN  THE   GENESIS  OF 
IDEALISM 

By  Wendell  T.  Bush 

In  1684  was  published  at  Amsterdam  a  little 
book,  probably  seldom  read,  entitled  "Recueil  de 
quelques  pieces  curieuses  concernant  la  philoso- 
phic de  Monsieur  Descartes,"  attributed  to  Pierre 
Bayle,  The  collection  comprises  six  short  pieces 
together  with  an  introduction  by  the  compiler ;  and 
although  these  viewed  as  systematic  philosophy 
are  of  no  particular  interest,  yet  as  a  specimen  of 
the  discussions  which  gathered  about  the  Carte- 
sian movement  toward  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  more  than  thirty  years  after  the  death  of 
Descartes,  and  as  an  index  of  the  intellectual  situa- 
tion in  which  the  Cartesian  philosophy  was  obliged 
to  work  out  its  development,  the  Recueil  may  be 
deserving  of  some  attention. 

The  editor  laments  the  difficult^^  of  publishing 
books  of  liberal  tendencies  in  France,  where  the 
Inquisition  "is  making  rapid  progress."  Publi- 
cation without  the  official  permit,  extremely  diffi- 
cult to  obtain  for  liberal  books,  meant  that  the 
work  thus  issued  could  hardly  be  circulated.  The 
contents    of    the    Recueil    being    on    this    account 

83 


84  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

extremely  rare,  the  compiler  caused  them  to  be 
published  in  Holland,  where,  inasmuch  as  the  Refor- 
mation had  been  politically  successful,  works  on 
philosophy  were  not  liable  to  be  suppressed  in 
the  interest  of  Thomas  Aquinas  and  the  French 
monarchy. 

The  first  piece  in  the  collection  is  the  text  of  an 
agreement  between  the  Jesuits  and  the  fathers  of 
the  Oratory,  according  to  which  the  latter  under- 
took to  cease  teaching  certain  opinions  which  the 
former  did  not  approve,  and  in  particular  to  cease 
teaching  the  Cartesian  philosophy.  The  para- 
graphs which  bear  directly  upon  the  philosophy  of 
Descartes  are  as  follows  :  "  Dans  la  physique  Ton  ne 
doit  points 'eloigner  de  la  physique  ni  des  principes 
de  physique  d'Aristote  commun^ment  re9us  dans 
les  colleges  pour  s'attacher  a  la  doctrine  nouvelle 
de  Monsieur  Descartes,  que  le  Roi  a  defendu  qu'on 
enseignat  pour  de  bonnes  raisons.  L'on  doit 
enseigner:  1.  Que  I'extension  actuelle  et  ext^ri- 
eure  n'est  pas  de  I'essence  de  la  matiere.  2.  Qu'en 
chaque  corps  naturel  il  y  a  une  forme  substan- 
tielle  reellement  distinguee  de  la  matiere.  3.  Qu'il 
y  a  des  accidens  reels  et  absolus  inh^rens  h 
leurs  sujets,  reellement  distingues  de  toute  autre 
substance,  et  qui  peuvent  surnaturellement  etre 
sans  aucun  sujet.  4.  Que  Tame  est  reellement 
presente  et  unie  a  tout  le  corps  et  a  toutes 
les  parties  du  corps.  5.  Que  la  pensee  et  la 
connaissance    n'est     pas    de    I'essence    de    Fame 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  85 

raisonnable.  6.  Qii'il  n'y  a  aucime  repugnance 
que  Dieu  puisse  produire  plusieurs  mondes  a  meme 
temps.  7.  Que  le  vide  n'est  pas  impossible." 
These  propositions  are  preceded  by  certain  re- 
quirements in  regard  to  instruction  in  theology, 
the  purpose  of  which  can  only  have  been  to  weaken 
certain  doctrines  of  Augustine,  to  whom  the  Ora- 
tory was  much  attached.  It  is  significant  that 
Augustine  and  Descartes  are  here  included  under 
a  common  prohibition. 

The  second  piece  is  in  the  nature  of  a  reply  to 
the  above  agreement;  it  criticises  particularly  the 
hostility  of  the  Jesuits  toward  Saint  Augustine  and 
their  endeavor  in  the  above-mentioned  contract 
to  undermine  his  authority. 

The  editor's  explanation  of  the  third  piece  I  will 
transcribe.  "To  better  understand  the  history  of 
the  other  pieces,  you  must  know  that  in  the  year 
1680  a  Jesuit  of  Caen,  the  Pere  de  Valois,  assuming 
the  name  Louis  de  la  Ville,  published  a  treatise 
entitled  Sentimens  de  Monsieur  Descartes  touchant 
V essence  et  les  proprietes  du  corps  opposes  (i  la  doc- 
trine de  Veglise  et  conformes  aux  erreurs  de  Calvin 
sur  le  sujet  de  VEucharistie.  He  dedicated  it  to 
the  French  clergy  and  exhorted  the  prelates  to  re- 
pair at  once  the  great  evil  with  which  the  church 
was  threatened  by  the  Cartesians.  He  begged  them 
in  the  name  of  France  to  pronounce  sentence  of 
condemnation  against  Cartesianism,  and  in  order 
to  influence  them  with  a  reason  which  he  knew  to 


86  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

be  all  powerful  in  its  effects  upon  their  minds,  he 
referred  to  a  decree  of  the  council  of  state  and  to  a 
lettre  de  cachet  which  had  forbidden  the  teaching 
of  a  Cartesian  professor.  The  book  alarmed  the 
entire  following  of  this  philosophy ;  M.  Regis,  the 
celebrated  Cartesian,  was  obliged  to  break  off  his 
lectures  in  Paris,  and  in  addition,  was  unable  to 
obtain  a  license  to  publish  a  work  on  philosophy 
which  he  had  long  since  completed.  Each  feared 
lest  he  be  obliged  to  sign  a  declaration  or  be  excom- 
municated as  a  heretic.  Thereupon  M.  Bernier  .  .  . 
caused  to  be  printed  secretly  a  little  book,  the  third 
piece  in  the  collection,  of  which  he  distributed  a 
few  copies  to  his  friends  and  even  to  a  few  prelates. 
He  agrees  that  critics  may  say  whatever  they 
please  of  the  Cartesians,  and  he  declares  strongly 
against  some  of  their  opinions  in  order  the  better 
to  make  his  peace ;  and  for  the  rest,  having  as  much 
reason  as  they  to  fear  the  charge  of  heresy  in  the 
matter  of  transubstantiation,  he  does  what  he  can 
to  establish  his  innocence."  In  general  M.  Ber- 
nier's  defence  of  the  Cartesians  takes  the  line,  not 
of  denying  their  obligation  to  make  their  meta- 
physics conform  to  the  Council  of  Trent,  but  of 
arguing  that  their  Jesuit  critic  has  not  correctly 
stated  the  orthodox  position.  This  critic  had  written 
with  a  particular  animus  against  Malebranche, 
and  a  portion  of  the  essay  discusses  the  nature  of 
original  sin  in  infants.  M.  Bernier  seeks  to  justify 
Malebranche  on  this  point  against  M.  de  la  Ville. 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  87 

With  such  problems  was  the  philosophy  of  that  day 
forced  to  occupy  itself. 

The  fourth  essay  in  the  Recueil  is  a  Memoire  pour 
expliqucr  la  possihilite  de  la  transubstantiation, 
attributed  to  Malebranche.  This  essay,  the  editor 
observes,  was  refi^arded  with  all  the  more  suspicion 
"since  it  explained  the  Roman  Eucharist  accord- 
ing to  the  hypotheses  of  the  new  philosophy  in  a  way 
wholly  different  from  that  to  be  found  in  the  WTit- 
ings  of  M.  Descartes  or  of  M.  Rohault  or  of  M. 
Maignan."  This  new  explanation  was  evidently 
intended  to  meet  the  difficulty  which  the  imagina- 
tion encountered  in  assenting  to  the  orthodox  pos- 
tulate that  wherever  there  was  a  consecrated  host 
there  existed  the  complete  and  entire  body  of 
Christ.  It  is  a  unique  case  of  the  one  and  the 
many,  but  since,  says  Malebranche,  in  any  prod- 
uct of  art  the  unity  of  the  created  thing  is  derived 
from  the  will  of  its  creator,  so  the  apparent  diver- 
sity of  many  bits  of  bread  and  many  portions  of 
wine  is  no  hindrance  to  their  essential  unity. 

The  fifth  piece  is  by  a  professor  at  Sedan,  pre- 
sumably Bayle  himself,  and  is  a  refutation  of  M. 
de  la  Ville's  efforts  to  disprove  by  the  *' light  of 
reason"  the  Cartesian  theory  of  the  essence  of 
body.  And  now  we  come  to  the  editor's  statement 
of  his  purpose  in  publishing  this  collection.  "It 
is  clear  that  the  Council  of  Trent  has  decided  not 
only  that  the  body  of  Christ  is  present  wherever 
there  are  consecrated  hosts,  but  also  that  all  the 


88  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

portions  of  his  body  interpenetrate  each  other. 
It  is  clear  from  the  book  of  M.  de  la  Ville  that  this 
decision  is  wholly  incompatible  with  the  doctrine 
that  the  entire  essence  of  matter  is  comprised  in 
its  extension.  It  is  clear  from  the  comments  of 
M.  Bernier  and  of  Malebranche  that  their  man- 
ner of  explaining  transubstantiation  is  not  that 
which  is  clearly  contained  in  the  words  of  the 
Council.  Finally  it  is  clear  from  the  dissertation 
of  the  professor  of  Sedan  that  it  is  as  impossible 
for  matter  to  be  penetrated  as  it  is  for  two  things 
to  be  equal  when  one  is  greater  than  another.  It 
is  therefore  clear  that  the  Council  of  Trent  decided 
falsely  when  it  spoke  of  the  presence  of  Our  Lord 
upon  the  altars."  If  only  the  Roman  Catholics 
would  avail  themselves  of  clear  and  distinct  ideas 
in  this  matter,  says  Bayle,  they  would  recognize 
their  errors  and  might  then  welcome  the  co- 
operation of  the  Cartesians  in  formulating  a  doc- 
trine of  the  Eucharist  to  which  the  followers  of 
Calvin  could  assent. 

One  essay  remains.  It  is  a  series  of  ten  medita- 
tions modelled  on  the  Meditations  of  Descartes. 
A  rather  characteristic  sentence  may  be  quoted. 
"My  will  .  .  .  is  an  impression  or  a  movement 
that  God  has  put  into  me  by  which  he  impels  me 
toward  himself  as  all  good  and  all  being." 

These  little  pieces  were  put  together  by  a  very 
gifted  man  with  a  perfectly  serious  purpose.  He 
did  not  regard  them,  apparently,  as  unusual  or 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  89 

eccentric.  On  the  contrary,  one's  impression  is  that 
he  regarded  them  as  entirely  normal  and  reason- 
able concerning  a  point  of  the  utmost  consequence. 
Certainly  if  Bayle  had  not  regarded  the  transub- 
stantiation  controversy  as  concerned  with  a  genuine 
and  vital  problem  he  would  have  shown  a  capacity 
for  intellectual  detachment  altogether  exceptional. 
And  if  he  had  regarded  the  problem  as  having  a 
social  and  political  significance,  rather  than  a  truly 
metaphysical  one,  he  could  not  have  discussed  it 
without  reference  to  its  metaphysical  presuppo- 
sitions. And  now  for  the  reflections  which  such  a 
book  may  stimulate. 

When  Descartes  took  a  hand  in  helping  along 
the  transition  from  the  Middle  Age  tliere  was  much 
concern  lest  he  leave  no  place  for  saving  an  article 
of  faith  to  which  the  Middle  Age  had  been  particu- 
larly attached,  —  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation. 
This  was  a  really  burning  issue;  no  philosopher 
who  desired  a  hearing  in  the  French  world  of  letters 
could  afford  to  be  identified  with  the  party  of 
Calvin,  and  uncertainty  on  the  question  of  the 
Eucharist  pointed  tow^ard  uncomfortable  heresy. 
Even  Descartes,  although  not  believing  in  the  in- 
dependent accidents,  was  persuaded  to  make  two 
attempts  at  reconciling  his  conception  of  substance 
with  the  necessities  of  dogma,  and  several  of  the 
minor  Cartesians  made  enthusiastic  endeavors  to 
explain  the  miracle  of  the  Mass  by  the  principles 
of  the  new  philosophy.    The  significance  of  these 


90  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

undertakings,  seemingly  so  unimportant  for  phi- 
losophy, is  by  no  means  slight  for  the  history  of  it. 
In  the  process  of  putting  off  mediaevalism, 
western  Europe  endured  the  throes  which  we  call 
by  the  name  of  the  Protestant  Reformation.  The 
wars  of  religion  in  France  had,  to  be  sure,  come  to 
an  end,  but  the  sentiments  which  those  wars  had 
kept  alive  were  still  active,  and  if  the  fighting  had 
not  been  really  for  points  of  dogma,  it  was  neverthe- 
less under  the  banner  of  religious  demands  ;  and  the 
party  antipathies  and  social  rivalries  incidental  to 
the  whole  situation  necessarily  kept  men's  interest 
tense  and  keen  in  whatever  points  of  theology 
might  seem  to  be  involved.  The  dogma  at  the 
focus  of  things  was  the  Eucharist,  and  the  Council 
of  Trent  had  reaffirmed  the  orthodox  position  on 
this  matter  with  all  the  emphasis  at  its  command. 
While  many  speculative  minds  might  be  a  little 
weary  of  St.  Thomas,  they  were  the  more  anxious 
for  a  plausible  propping  of  their  faith;  for  the 
Reformation  had  brought  with  it  a  real  quickening 
of  religious  interest,  and  the  dogma  about  which 
so  much  passion  had  gathered  got  the  benefit  of 
this  revival.  How  should  a  thing  so  important, 
seemingly  so  fundamental,  as  transubstantiation 
have  its  existence  solely  in  men's  pious  and  inquis- 
itorial minds  ?  For  it  must  be  remembered  that 
people  were  really  excited  about  transubstantia- 
tion, and  the  natural  question  to  ask  concerning 
a  new  kind  of  philosophy  was  where  it  stood  on 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  91 

this  question.  A  man  of  such  rare  independence 
and  self-control  as  Descartes,  with  a  bent  of 
genius  which  impelled  him  to  the  exact  study  of 
nature,  and  with  none  of  the  obligations  incidental 
to  a  university  position,  could  be  indifferent  to  the 
metaphysics  of  the  Eucharist;  but  even  so,  such 
indifference  would  probably  result  rather  from 
concentration  upon  his  proper  business  than  from 
an  insight  into  the  mythical  nature  of  the  problem ; 
and  Descartes  wished  and  tried  to  remove  incon- 
gruities between  his  philosophy  and  the  popular 
faith.  With  the  most  sincere  good  will,  however, 
the  thing  was  impossible.  The  claim  that  exten- 
sion constituted  the  essence  of  bodies  would  not 
square  with  the  necessities  of  the  Tridentine  dogma. 
This  did  not  seriously  disturb  Descartes.  He  could 
seclude  himself  in  Holland  and  carry  on  patient 
researches,  withholding  his  conclusions,  if  that 
seemed  best,  for  publication  after  his  death.  But 
the  subsequent  development  of  his  doctrines  he 
must  leave  to  others.  How  will  it  be  when  the  fol- 
lowers of  the  master  lack  his  scientific  genius,  and 
are,  for  the  most  part,  university  professors  or 
churchmen  under  the  French  monarchy  at  the 
epoch  of  its  culmination  ? 

This  reference  to  transubstantiation  may  serve  to 
remind  us  of  the  atmosphere  in  which  "modern" 
philosophy,  to  speak  conventionally,  had  its  begin- 
nings on  the  continent,  and  to  orient  us  a  little  in 
a  period   that  intellectually   must  have  been   the 


92  A   FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

most  exciting  one  since  the  time  of  Augustine. 
The  equanimity  with  which  we  to-day  contem- 
plate the  group  of  rival  metaphysical  theories  was 
then  undreamed  of.  The  tradition  was  of  a  single 
body  of  doctrine  which  had  all  the  importance  of 
truth  itself.  The  blend  of  Aristotle  and  Aquinas, 
secure  in  the  universities,  was  not  to  be  ousted  from 
its  strongholds  by  a  new  philosophical  way  of  put- 
ting things,  unless  the  new  way  took  account  of 
the  problems  that  seemed  important,  and  satisfied 
certain  dominant  interests  better  than  the  Peripa- 
tetic tradition  could  do.  It  was  quite  inevitable 
therefore  that,  under  the  conditions  provided,  meta- 
physics should  continue  to  be  concerned  chiefly 
with  what  we  may  call  theological  problems.  Had 
the  Cartesians  been  anxious  to  avoid  theological 
issues,  a  persecution  conducted  by  theological  con- 
servatives made  such  detachment  impossible.  Even 
in  Holland,  the  new  philosophy  was  denounced 
as  contrary  to  the  Bible  and  inimical  to  the  civil 
power.  Descartes  himself  was  called  a  Jesuit  and 
an  atheist.  In  France  Cartesianism  was  identified 
with  Calvinism  and,  what  was  more  dangerous, 
with  Jansenism.  Reference  has  already  been 
made  to  the  agreement  according  to  which  the 
Oratory,  to  avoid  serious  calamity,  bound  itself 
to  abjure  Descartes,  and  to  mutilate  its  interpre- 
tation of  Augustine. 

I  should  perhaps  apologize  for  dwelling  upon 
facts  and  conditions  generally  known  and  acces- 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  93 

sible  to  all  in  books  which  describe  the  period. 
My  excuse  is  that  the  bearing  of  these  facts  and 
conditions  upon  the  evolution  of  metaphysical 
concepts  has  not  been  generally  appreciated.  His- 
torians have  not  been  suflficiently  concerned  with 
philosophy,  nor  philosophers  with  histor}',  to  esti- 
mate the  influence  of  the  sentiments  of  the  later 
Reformation  upon  subsequent  philosophy,  and  to 
relate  certain  modern  results  to  these  sources. 

But  to  resume:  the  Cartesians  did  not  wish  to 
avoid  theological  problems,  for  these  seemed  the 
most  important  of  all  problems,  and  to  provide 
the  special  business  of  philosophy.  The  innova- 
tors in  metaphysics  were  engaged  in  combating 
the  system  of  philosophy  endorsed  by  the  Council 
of  Trent,  and  Cartesianism  had,  accordingly,  a 
certain  kinship  with  the  Reformation  doctrines, 
in  so  far  as  both  Cartesians  and  Calvinists  were 
agents  in  the  same  process  of  historical  tran- 
sition. 

The  harrying  of  the  Cartesians  had  its  natural 
result.  In  Holland  they  tried  to  prove  that 
Descartes  was  in  the  Bible  and  in  France  tliat  he 
was  in  Aristotle.  Louis  XIV  sought  to  make 
atonement  by  persecuting  nonconformity.  It  was 
no  light  matter  for  a  man  of  prominence  to  defend 
opinions  obnoxious  to  the  Jesuit  order.  Bouillier 
{Histoire  de  la  philosophie  Cartesienne)  states  that 
the  most  active  persecution  of  the  Cartesians  was 
during  the  period  1675-1690.     Although  this  per- 


94  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

secution  did  not  diminish  the  vogue  of  Cartesian- 
ism,  it  did  serve  to  keep  metaphysics  tied  up  to 
theology.  The  whole  situation  could  not  fail  to 
develop  habits  of  mind  such  that  the  problems  of 
philosophy  expressed  a  theological  tradition  rather 
than  a  free  curiosity  about  nature  and  an  interest 
in  man's  natural  welfare. 

Very  significant  is  the  method  by  which  the 
opinions  of  Descartes  were  first  publicly  taught. 
For  a  considerable  time  they  had  to  be  introduced 
under  the  cloak  of  St.  Augustine.  One  of  the  argu- 
ments in  support  of  the  theory  of  animal  automat- 
ism is  characteristic.  Since  animals  have  not 
sinned,  God  would  be  unjust  if  they  were  to  suffer 
pain.  And  the  facility  with  which  Cartesianism 
could  be  taught  under  the  authority  of  Augustine 
points  to  a  feature  of  Descartes 's  thought  that  is  in 
this  connection  of  particular  consequence. 

Descartes  in  all  his  writings  forces  the  idea  of  God 
to  the  front,  and  seeks  to  give  the  impression  that 
the  validity  of  all  subsequent  conclusions  depends 
upon  the  certainty  of  God's  existence.  All  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  nature  and  man  is  made  to  appear 
as  contingent  upon  a  knowledge  of  God.  This  as- 
pect of  the  new  doctrine  appears  to  have  given  the 
liveliest  satisfaction,  and  it  is  easily  understood  as 
soon  as  we  see  how  it  reproduces  the  most  funda- 
mental conviction  of  the  Reformation.  This  was 
the  Augustinian  exaltation  of  God  and  belittling  of 
man.     It  was  Augustine  who  supplied  the  patristic 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  95 

authority  for  the  Reformation  by  his  doctrine  of 
predestination,  from  which  it  followed  that  the 
sacraments  must  be  wholly  ineffective  as  efl'orLs  to 
interfere  in  the  distribution  of  grace.  Man  with 
the  burden  of  Adam's  sin  upon  him  was  quite  in- 
capable of  bringing  his  will  into  agreement  with 
God's  will,  without  the  gift  of  undeserved  grace. 
The  opera  operata  could  avail  nothing.  All  de- 
pended upon  God  in  the  matter  of  salvation,  as  it 
did  in  the  Cartesian  epistemology,  and  therefore  it 
was  that  Descartes,  although  he  was  no  Calvinist, 
yet,  being  opposed  to  mediijevalism,  could  not  fail 
to  be  impressed  with  this,  for  his  day,  modern  sen- 
timent. For  although  the  Reformation  in  France 
had  failed  politically,  yet  the  Augustinianism  of 
the  movement  had  been  taken  up  by  those  of  the 
clerg\^  wdio,  while  aiming  at  the  moht  i)erfect  ortho- 
dox}', yet  wished  to  purify  the  church  of  all  that 
had  given  just  ground  for  criticism.  This  really 
spiritual  wave  of  the  Catholic  reaction  bore  Des- 
cartes into  the  haven  of  popular  approval  in 
France.  His  demonstrations  of  the  existence  of 
God  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul  gave  such 
satisfaction  that  Cartesianism  came  to  be  regarded 
as  the  precious  ally  of  conservative  religious  faith. 
But  if  the  backing  of  the  Oratory  was  worth  so 
much  to  Cartesianism,  it  could  not  fail  to  influence 
its  subsequent  tendencies  by  keeping  the  attention 
of  "philosophers"  concentrated  upon  the  meta- 
physical presuppositions   involved  in   tlie  idea  of 


96  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

the  soul,  separable  from  the  body,  the  vehicle  of 
sin  and  the  object  of  grace. 

There  is  nothing  remarkable,  then,  in  recognizing 
that  the  opinions,  on  what  seemed  fundamental 
problems,  of  the  men  who  were  engaged  in  win- 
ning an  intellectual  emancipation  from  Thomas 
Aquinas,  constituted  the  natural  metaphysics  of 
what  we  call  the  Protestant  Reformation.  The 
affinity  with  Augustine  was  immediately  recog- 
nized and  made  use  of;  in  the  Occasionalists  we 
find  very  frankly  stated  that  entire  dependence  of 
man  upon  God  which  the  reformers  were  so  fond 
of  emphasizing,  while  both  the  Cartesians  and 
the  Huguenot  party  were  fighting  the  same  enemy, 
the  authority  of  the  scholastic  tradition.  The 
effect  of  it  all  is  that  modern  philosophy  has  been, 
in  the  main,  not  free  inquiry  but  Protestant  meta- 
physics, and  its  central  problem,  the  problem  of 
knowledge,  has  been  determined,  not  by  an  exam- 
ination of  cognitive  experience  but  by  an  elabora- 
tion of  traditional  preconceptions  in  harmony  with 
the  dominant  interests  of  the  later  Reformation. 
The  problem  of  knowledge  naturally  arose  as  soon 
as  the  Cartesian  ideas  of  substance  made  knowl- 
edge a  mystery.  The  definition  of  the  soul,  how- 
ever, after  the  manner  of  "  conscious  substance,'* 
denying  to  it  all  power  of  affecting  or  being  affected 
by  the  world  about  it,  actually  proved  to  be  particu- 
larly gratifying  to  a  very  large  public,  as  it  seemed 
to  be  a  sufficient  demonstration  of  the  soul's  im- 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  97 

mortality;  and  it  was  to  be  expected  that  these 
presuppositions  which  made  knowledge  something 
wholly  unintelligible  should  be  nursed  and  forti- 
fied. The  immense  vogue  enjoyed  by  Malebranche, 
the  pride  in  his  development  of  Cartesianism,  the 
authorit}-  conceded  to  his  pious  metaphysics,  re- 
veal clearly  enough  the  inevitable  current. 

Another  circumstance  which  kept  philosophy  in 
the  land  of  impassioned  mythology  was  the  burden 
of  responsibility  for  Spinoza.  "Is  Descartes  the 
father  and  the  accomplice  of  Spinoza,  or  is  his 
philosophy  the  antidote  of  Spinozism  ?  Is  Des- 
cartes the  builder  or  the  destroyer  of  the  new  doc- 
trine, Spinozismi  architectus  aut  eversor?  according 
to  the  titles  of  polemical  WTitings  on  opposite  sides. 
This  was  the  question  debated  from  the  start 
with  singular  vivacity  between  the  Cartesians  of 
Holland  and  their  opponents.  Moreover,  the  two 
parties  competed  with  one  another  in  casting  abuse 
and  anathemas  at  the  WTetched  author,  and  the 
Cartesians  exclaimed  the  louder,  in  order  to  avert 
from  themselves  the  suspicion  of  having  anything 
in  common  with  this  man."  ^  And  in  Leibniz  we 
find  a  man  of  altogether  exceptional  gifts  dishing 
up  the  old  wine  of  mediaeval  faith,  and  seeking  to 
reconcile  the  two  confessions  on  the  problem  of  the 
Eucharist. 

Meanwhile,  British  philosophy,  starting  with 
the  same  conception  of  knowledge,  as  the  states  of 

'  Bouillier:  "Histoire  de  la  philosophic  Cart^sienne,"  Vol.  I,  p.  416. 

7 


98  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

an  ambiguous  substance,  developed  in  an  environ- 
ment characterized  by  the  attempt  to  base  theo- 
logical guarantees  upon  innate  ideas,  by  the  deistic 
controversy,  and  by  a  certain  influence  of  Carte- 
sian thought.  That  little  discourse  between  five 
or  six  friends  which  brought  the  participants  to  a 
stand  and  was  the  occasion  of  Locke's  "Essay" 
was  concerned,  we  are  told,  with  the  principles  of 
morality  and  revealed  religion.  However  empirical 
Locke's  own  temperament  may  have  been,  he  was 
quite  unable  to  disregard  the  problems  that  agi- 
tated the  world  about  him.  Calvinistic  theology 
was  in  the  ascendant,  and  Locke  grew  up  among 
the  English  dissenters.  It  was  not  likely  that  any 
one  made  of  milder  stuff  than  Hobbes  would  be 
sufficiently  sceptical  about  the  soul  to  doubt  its 
capacity  to  become  the  locus  of  mental  processes. 
Whether  we  use  the  term  soul,  mind,  or  conscious 
substance  makes  no  particular  difference.  "  The 
soul "  is  the  parent  concept  of  all  such  notions.  The 
history  of  British  philosophy  shows  an  increasing 
emphasis  upon  "states"  of  mind,  and  an  increas- 
ing scepticism  toward  the  "substance"  supporting 
them.  Taking  the  concept  of  conscious  substance 
naively,  as  did  the  Cartesians,  states  of  conscious- 
ness are  evidently  the  accidents  of  this  type  of  sub- 
stance, and  when  the  substance  has  been  criticised 
away,  as  by  Hume,  or  given  a  radically  different 
meaning,  as  by  Leibniz,  consciousness,  like  the 
independent  accidents  of  the  Mass,  becomes  a  com- 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  99 

plete  and  finished  metaphysical  instrument.  The 
separation  accompHshed,  physiological  arguments 
serve  to  justify  it;  they  may  even  have  made  the 
separation  easier;  but  without  the  conception  of  a 
soul  and  its  states,  a  mind  with  its  ideas  and  impres- 
sions, it  is  hard  to  see  how  such  a  notion  as  con- 
sciousness could  ever  have  been  born. 

The  soul :  whence  came  such  a  singular  idea  as 
that  of  this  immaterial,  immortal,  cognitive  entity  ? 
It  was  natural  for  Christian  metaphysics  to  lay 
great  stress  on  the  individual  subject  of  salvation. 
It  was  natural  for  the  soul,  whose  precarious  state 
was  the  justification  of  the  church,  to  take  a  prom- 
inent place  in  the  dogmatics  of  Augustine,  But 
there  is  nothing  like  a  controversy  to  call  forth  the 
full  measure  of  ingenuity  and  eloquence  in  de- 
fence of  such  an  idea,  and  the  current  emanation 
theories,  particularly  as  defended  by  the  INIani- 
chseans,  had  implications  which  so  vahant  a 
churchman  could  not  tolerate. 

If  we  assume  the  agency  of  a  literary  tradition, 
the  presumption  is  that  the  soul  doctrine  came  to 
Augustine  from  Plato.  There  is  rather  much  in 
Plato  about  the  soul.  It  seemed  to  him  extremely 
important  to  prove  its  immortality,  but  Plato 
knows  no  problem  as  to  the  existence  of  tlie  soul. 
That  is  never  questioned.  This  perplexing  thing, 
the  seat  of  personahty,  imprisoned  for  the  time 
being  in  the  body  and  contaminated  by  it,  the 
source    of    motion,    the    principle    of    hfe,  —  one 


100  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

would  like  to  know  where  Plato  got  such  a  curious 
idea.  Nearly  all  primitive  races  might,  no  doubt, 
have  provided  him  with  something  of  the  sort. 
Actually,  however,  the  idea  appears  to  have  been 
the  chief  concern  of  the  contemporary  mystery 
organizations,  in  which  the  conception  of  the  soul 
was  made  to  do  very  much  the  same  kind  of  serv- 
ice it  did  for  Plato ;  and  its  injection  into  philoso- 
phy may  well  have  a  good  deal  to  do  with  its 
usefulness  for  the  purposes  of  the  Orphic  cults. 

The  question  of  the  origin  of  the  soul- idea  is  a 
problem  in  the  study  of  primitive  culture.  The 
experience  of  dreams,  the  mysteries  of  birth  and 
death,  customs  of  totemism,  the  imitative  magic  of 
harvest  rites,  in  such  phenomena  must  the  notion 
of  soul  have  originated.  Or,  if  we  regard  the  Or- 
phic mysteries  as  the  beginning  of  that  tradition 
which  has  dominated  the  history  of  philosophy 
even  down  to  the  present  day,  then  the  concept  of 
consciousness,  or  its  parent  concept,  the  soul,  may 
yet  be  traced,  perhaps  confidently,  to  the  blood  of 
the  bull  Dionysos. 

But  whether  the  line  of  tradition  from  primitive 
beliefs  to  the  metaphysics  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury was  the  one  here  suggested,  or  whether  the 
connection  was  through  other  channels,  makes  no 
difference  to  the  main  thesis  of  this  paper.  His- 
torically, the  concept  of  consciousness  was  evolved 
by  cutting  conscious  substance  away  from  its  own 
accidents.    The  notion  of  such  a  substance  derives 


WENDELL  T.   BUSH  lOl 

ultimately  from  primitive  culture.  These  consid- 
erations may  be  philosophically  irrelevant,  but  they 
ought  to  interest  that  small  though  growing  num- 
ber of  students  who  beHeve  that  history  should  be 
history  even  though  it  be  the  history  of  philosophy. 
If  the  Renaissance  could  have  run  its  course  un- 
confused  by  the  odium  theologicum,  tlie  rediscovery 
of  nature  and  man  might  have  brought  philosophy 
down  from  heaven  to  earth,  to  find  there  her  natural 
occupation.  But  this  was  not  to  be.  There  was  the 
Reformation  and  the  Council  of  Trent  and  the 
Thirty  Years'  War;  Calvin,  Port  Royal,  Male- 
branche,  and  Leibniz.  Was  it  not  inevitable  that, 
not  nature  and  man  as  humanly  experienced,  but 
the  soul,  the  w^orld  and  the  deity  as  metaphysically 
conceived,  should  be  the  theme  of  "modern"  phi- 
losophy ?  Why  be  surprised  that  the  metaphysics 
based  on  the  concept  of  consciousness  seems  to  have 
more  to  do  with  some  other  world  than  with  this 
one  ?  It  is  the  pride  of  idealism  that  instead  of 
guiding  the  work  of  actual  knowledge,  instead  of 
throwing  helpful  light  on  the  technique  of  discovery, 
this  type  of  philosophy  has,  in  the  main,  issued  in 
religious  metaphysics.  Nevertheless,  the  initiators 
of  modern  philosophy  were  surely  seeking  some- 
thing very  different,  and  from  their  point  of  view 
this  failure  to  escape  from  theological  reminiscence 
must  appear  as  fundamental  failure. 

It  has  been  my  purpose  to  ask  why  this  is  so, 
and  to  suggest  the  lines  along  which  an  intelligible 


102  A  FACTOR  IN  IDEALISM 

answer  could  be  attempted.  The  recent  meta- 
physics which  has  sought  to  guarantee  a  "spir- 
itual" conception  of  things  has  been  erected  on 
the  foundation  of  an  animistic  survival  from  primi- 
tive culture.  That  philosophers  themselves  have 
shown  for  the  most  part  little  interest  in  such  his- 
torical connections  is  readily  understood.  Not 
many  years  have  elapsed  since  most  of  the  com- 
petent thinkers  in  the  field  of  metaphysics  defended 
one  form  or  another  of  idealism,  and  a  certain  com- 
placent assurance  of  being  at  least  on  the  right 
track  made  most  of  them  indisposed  to  regard 
their  "truth"  as  an  historical  episode;  while  one 
effect  of  the  theory  of  evolution  has  been  the  dis- 
position to  assume  that  the  most  significant  thing 
about  the  past  is  that  it  was  a  preparation  for  the 
present.  And  as  for  the  present,  it  seems  inevit- 
ably human  to  regard  it,  not  as  history,  but  as  a 
specimen  of  eternity. 

When  Professor  James  asked  his  epoch-making 
question  "Does  consciousness  exist .'^"  he  let  in  the 
kind  of  light  that  is  often  more  salutary  than  wel- 
come. Not  less  emancipating  was  his  declared 
belief  that  consciousness  is  "the  faint  rumor  left 
behind  by  the  disappearing  'soul'  upon  the  air  of 
philosophy." 


CONSCIOUSNESS  A  FORM  OF  ENERGY 


CONSCIOUSNESS   A   FORM   OF   ENERGY 

By  Wm.  Pepperrell  Montague 

1  HE  most  perplexing  and  perhaps  the  most  cen- 
tral of  philosophical  problems  is  the  problem  of 
the  nature  of  consciousness  and  the  manner  of  its 
relation  to  the  world  which  it  reveals,  but  in  which 
it  also  abides.  A  physical  influence  of  some  sort, 
a  fact  accessible  to  the  external  perception  of  more 
than  one  observer,  is  propagated  along  a  nerve 
fibre,  and  at  a  certain  period  in  its  progress  there 
occurs  a  fact  of  an  entirely  different  nature,  to  wit, 
a  psychical  fact  which  is  accessible  to  the  internal 
perception  of  only  one  observer.  Nature  in  her 
transmutations  of  energy  affords  many  instances  of 
disparateness  between  the  antecedent  and  conse- 
quent stages  of  a  process,  but  in  none  of  them  is 
the  consequent  a  member  of  a  different  order  of 
being  from  that  of  the  antecedent.  Between  the 
consciousness  of  an  object  or  of  a  quality  and  the 
neural  process  which  antecedes  and  perhaps  accom- 
panies that  consciousness  there  is  a  difference  far 
transcending  all  differences  of  quality,  magnitude, 
time,  and  place  with  which  physics  is  conversant. 
The  system  of  physical  objects  seems  to  be  a  closed 

105 


106      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

system,  complete  in  itself,  in  which  no  room  can 
be  found  for  the  individual's  consciousness  of  those 
objects.  And  yet  the  consciousness  of  objects  is 
an  undeniable  consequence  of  certain  processes  in 
those  objects.  Now  it  is  at  once  the  aim  and  the 
duty  of  science  to  reveal  everywhere  the  hidden 
continuity  that  must  underlie  the  most  seem- 
ingly discontinuous  of  changes.  And  the  great- 
ness of  the  change  from  stimulus  to  sensation  may 
in  nowise  excuse  a  neglect  of  the  puzzle  presented 
therein. 

The  clear- thinking  Cartesians  were  the  first  to 
realize  the  crucial  nature  of  the  psychophysical 
problem,  and  the  first  to  make  a  sustained  and 
serious  attempt  at  its  solution.  They  failed;  and 
those  who  came  after  inherited  from  them  not 
their  fine  passion  for  the  problem  itself  but  only 
that  false  antithesis  of  consciousness  and  extension 
which  had  made  failure  inevitable.  Since  then 
there  have  been  several  attempts  to  explain  away 
the  problem  by  means  of  a  general  idealistic  meta- 
physic,  or  to  restate  it  in  such  a  way  that  the  differ- 
ence between  physical  and  psychical  should  appear 
as  a  purely  functional  or  methodological  distinc- 
tion. But  for  the  most  part  both  science  and  phi- 
losophy have  resigned  themselves  to  the  acceptance 
of  an  inexplicable  concomitance  or  "parallelism'* 
between  the  physical  and  psychical  series  of  events, 
a  working  hypothesis  that  is  relatively  independent 
of  ultimate  theories  concerning  the  primacy  of  one 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE    107 

or  the  other  of  these  series.  Quite  recently,  how- 
ever, there  has  grown  up  both  here  and  abroad  a 
new  interest  in  the  nature  of  consciousness  and  a 
new  kind  of  protest  against  the  epistemology  of 
ideahsm.  These  current  attempts  to  revive  real- 
ism by  combining  with  it  a  direct  or  presentative 
theory  of  knowledge  (the  "new  realism"),  and  cor- 
relatively  to  define  consciousness  as  a  relation  be- 
tween objects  rather  than  a  substance  in  which 
they  inhere,  promise  much  of  interest  and  value. 
But  I  believe  that  they  will  fall  short  of  their 
own  ideal,  should  they  persist  in  separating  the 
problem  of  the  nature  of  consciousness  from  the 
problem  of  its  genesis.  A  definition  of  conscious- 
ness either  as  a  relation  of  implicativeness  which 
under  certain  conditions  subsists  between  objects 
(Woodbridge) ,  or  as  a  diaphanous  medium  through 
which  on  occasion  objects  are  united  (G.  E. 
Moore),  seems  to  me  to  require  supplementation. 
For  such  definitions,  however  apt  in  their  estimates 
of  the  properties  of  a  psychosis  as  revealed  in 
introspection,  are  not  designed  to  throw  light  upon 
the  physical  and  physiological  conditions  of  its 
origin.  Nor  can  the  psychophysical  problem  which 
so  perplexed  the  Cartesians  be  brusquely  dis- 
missed as  a  question  pertaining  exclusively  to  the 
mechanism  of  consciousness.  If  evolution  has 
taught  us  anything  in  scientific  method,  it  has 
taught  us  that  a  sound  definition  will  throw  light 
on  the  genesis  of  that  which  is  defined.     Now  it  is 


108      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

by  no  accident  that  the  mind  has  a  body ;  and  the 
fact  that  sensations  follow  upon  stimuli  is  not  irrel- 
evant to  the  nature  of  sensations.  The  problem 
of  the  nature  of  consciousness  is,  in  short,  irremedi- 
ably involved  in  the  problem  of  its  mechanism,  and 
the  latter  problem  is  dual,  including  as  it  does  the 
question  of  how  conscious  elements  are  related  to 
neural  currents,  and  the  broader  question  of  the 
relation  of  consciousness  as  a  whole  to  the  living 
organism,  without  which  as  a  matrix  the  mind 
could  neither  begin  nor,  so  far  as  we  yet  know, 
continue  to  exist. 

In  the  following  investigation  of  the  nature 
of  the  psychical,  I  propose  to  examine  conscious- 
ness (1)  from  the  standpoint  of  introspection; 
(2)  from  the  external  standpoint  of  its  relation  to 
stimuli.  Lack  of  space  precludes  consideration  of 
the  third  and  still  larger  problem  which  concerns 
the  relation  of  consciousness  to  the  general  life- 
process  of  the  individual. 


Consciousness   from   within:   Psychosis 
and   Hylosis 

When  we  examine  introspectively  (or  retrospec- 
tively) a  direct  perceptual  experience,  it  appears 
to  contain  (1)  elements  which,  while  they  momen- 
tarily belong  to  our  experience,  seem  in  no  sense 
to  be  its  peculiar  property.    We  regard  these  ele- 


WM.   PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE    109 

ments  as  mere  sojourners  and  transients  in  our 
consciousness,  entering  or  leaving  it  at  pleasure, 
belonging  at  the  same  time  to  other  experiences 
than  ours  and  capable  of  existing  in  their  own  right 
apart  from  any  of  these  experiences.  Such  objects 
are  the  chairs,  stones,  stars,  animals,  etc.,  that  we 
call  physical.  We  find  (2)  a  quite  different  set  of 
elements,  such  as  feelings,  desires,  volitions,  etc., 
which  seem  to  stand  in  no  such  loose  and  dissoluble 
relations  to  our  experience.  We  can  conceive  of 
them  neither  as  parts  of  another  experience  nor  as 
capable  of  subsisting  in  their  own  right  apart  from 
any  experience  or  consciousness  of  them.  These 
elements  are  called  psychical.  We  find  (3)  a  cer- 
tain relational  form  or  structure  applicable  to  the 
experience  as  a  whole,  and  also  to  the  psychical 
parts  of  it,  but  not  applicable  to  the  first  named 
or  physical  elements.  The  physical  elements  are 
then  distinguished  from  the  psychical  not  only  by 
their  capacity  to  exist  in  many  experiences  or  in 
none,  but  also  by  their  possessing  a  form  or  struc- 
ture that  is  in  some  respects  the  antithesis  of  the 
psychical  structure,  which  latter  is  also  the  structure 
of  the  experience  as  a  whole ;  and  it  is  in  their  con- 
trast of  structure  rather  than  in  their  contrast  of 
content  that  the  most  promising  basis  for  a  clear 
distinction  between  physical  and  psychical  is  to  be 
found. 

The  problem  of  further  defining  the  psychical  is 
indeed  complicated  at  the  outset  by  the  consider- 


110      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

ation  that  while  the  physical  is  capable  of  becom- 
ing a  part  of  the  psychical  system,  from  which  it  is 
to  be  distinguished,  yet  from  another  point  of  view 
the  physical  world  may  be  regarded  as  itself  con- 
taining the  totality  of  the  very  experiences  which 
reveal  and  contain  it.  We  might  compare  the 
situation  to  a  lake  in  which  there  were  a  number 
of  whirlpools,  through  each  one  of  which  all  the 
water  flowed  or  could  flow.  The  water  (physi- 
cal objects)  could  then  be  said  to  be  contained  in 
the  whirlpools  (consciousnesses),  while  at  the 
same  time  the  whirlpools  themselves  would  be 
in  their  turn  contained  in  the  water  of  the  lake. 
Let  us  seek  to  formulate  the  differences  in 
structure  of  these  two  curiously  interpenetrating 
systems. 

The  physical  world  and  every  portion  of  that 
world  is  a  system  in  which  the  plurality  of  the 
elements  is  primary  and  the  unity  of  the  system  is 
secondary.  Every  material  object  is  conceived  as 
being  susceptible  of  indefinite  division  and  sub- 
division into  parts.  Whatever  is  physical  is  es- 
sentially plural;  such  unity  as  pertains  to  it  is 
factitious  or  external.  This  essential  divisibility  or 
compositeness  of  material  objects  is  the  real  justifi- 
cation for  formulating  their  behavior  in  terms  of 
atomistic  and  mechanistic  analysis.  We  never 
rest  satisfied  with  the  view  of  one  object  influenc- 
ing another  by  means  of  its  nature  or  quality,  for 
we  know  that  that  nature  or  quaUty  is  dependent 


w:m.  pepperrell  montague  m 

upon  the  parts  of  the  thing  and  upon  their  rela- 
tions. And  the  reduction  of  quahty  to  quantity  in 
the  physical  world  rests  on  the  fact  that  qualities 
act  only  vicariously ;  never  in  their  own  right  but 
always  as  the  correlates  of  spatio-temporal  relations. 
The  static  aspect  of  this  truth  is  evidenced  in  our 
appreciation  of  the  impossibility  of  a  quality  or 
universal  having  physical  existence  apart  from 
matter.  It  must  inhere  in  the  latter  as  its  state  or 
accident.  In  the  material  world  a  thing  must  be 
before  it  can  be  somewhat. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  a  consideration  of  the  struc- 
ture of  a  psychosis,  by  which  term  is  meant  an 
individual's  consciousness-of-objects  or  total  experi- 
ence at  any  given  moment.  Like  a  material  system 
(which  for  convenience  we  may  name  a  "hylo- 
sis"),  every  psychosis  possesses  both  unity  and 
variety.  But  the  plurality  of  elements  in  a  psychi- 
cal system  is  always  secondary  and  subordinate  to 
its  unity  as  a  whole.  My  experience  of  ten  inches 
is  by  no  means  composed  of  ten  one- inch  experi- 
ences. I  cannot  possibly  imagine  that  experience 
divided  up  into  separable  parts.  And  as  in  the  ma- 
terial system  we  found  the  compositeness  of  the 
whole  reflected  in  the  compositeness  of  each  of  its 
parts,  so  in  the  psychosis  we  find  the  unity  and  in- 
divisibility of  the  whole  repeated  in  the  similar 
unity  and  indivisibility  of  each  psychical  element. 
My  consciousness  of  the  room,  for  example,  in- 
cludes my  consciousness  of  the  table.     The  con- 


112      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

sciousness  of  the  table  includes  the  consciousness 
of  the  table's  legs.  But  it  would  be  as  impossible 
to  separate  my  consciousness  of  the  table-legs  from 
the  consciousness  of  the  other  parts  of  the  table,  as 
to  separate  my  consciousness  of  the  table  from  my 
consciousness  of  the  room.  Unity  or  indivisibility 
is  as  fundamental  a  property  of  the  experiencing 
manifold  as  plurality  or  divisibility  is  of  the  experi- 
enced manifold.  We  must  not  interpret  this  to 
mean  that  the  physical  world  lacks  quality  and 
unity  or  that  the  psychical  lacks  quantity  and  plu- 
rality. Each  order  contains  as  much  of  both  quan- 
tity and  quality  as  does  the  other;  only  in  the 
physical  world  it  is  the  qualities  that  are  secondary 
and  factitious  while  in  the  psychical  the  reverse  is 
true.  But  let  us  see  to  what  extent  this  abstract 
formulation  of  the  differentia  of  the  psychical  can 
serve  to  explain  certain  of  its  other  and  more 
familiar  properties. 

The  first  of  these  subsidiary  characteristics  to 
which  I  would  call  attention  is  the  psychical  status 
of  class -concepts,  universals  or  attributes  in  their 
relation  to  the  particular  things  in  which  they  in- 
here. It  often  happens  in  my  own  experience,  and 
I  presume  in  that  of  others,  that  the  quality  of  a 
sensation  is  perceived  before  the  local  sign  or  par- 
ticular place  to  which  that  quality  will  be  referred. 
A  sound  or  even  a  color  is  appreciated  as  such  and 
only  later  is  it  viewed  as  an  attribute  inhering  along 
with  other  attributes  in  a  particular  object.     And 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     113 

as,  in  direct  experience,  the  only  meaning  we  can 
give  to  a  "  thing"  in  distinction  from  its  "states  "  is 
the  definite  position  in  the  spatio-temporal  system 
in  which  those  states  or  qualities  are  exemplified,  I 
interpret  this  felt  priority  of  a  quality  to  its  local 
sign  as  justifying  in  the  sphere  of  a  psychosis  the 
Platonic  contention  of  the  primacy  of  class-jorms 
or  natures  to  the  class-members  which  embody  them. 
And  if  this  primacy  be  questioned  in  the  case  of 
sense  experience,  I  feel  sure  it  will  be  accepted  as 
holding  true  of  the  more  conceptual  phases  of  our 
mental  life.  We  have  to  know  the  meaning  of  a 
general  term  before  we  can  apply  it  to  particular 
objects.  The  members  of  a  class  are,  for  thought, 
primarily  only  the  more  or  less  accidental  embodi- 
ments of  a  certain  nature  or  meaning.  And  this 
latter  may  be  analyzed  and  discussed  in  complete 
disregard  of  whether  or  not  it  happens  to  be  actu- 
aUzed  here,  there,  or  anywhere.  Professor  Wood- 
worth's  discovery  of  the  imageless  or  non-sensorial 
elements  of  many  clearly  defined  topics  of  thought 
and  plans  of  action  gives  striking  emphasis  to  the 
truth  in  question ;  though  even  without  appeal  to 
these  non-sensory  elements  it  seems  to  me,  as  I 
have  said,  easy  to  imagine  a  specific  nature  without 
also  imagining  it  as  existing  at  a  particular  place, 
i.  e.,  as  a  particular  object.  I  can  certainly  think  of 
making  a  journey  to  San  Francisco  without  con- 
sidering whether  I  shall  go  by  way  of  Chicago  or 
by  way  of   St.  Louis,  this  week  or  next  week  or 

8 


114      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

never.  What  the  British  nominahsts  thought  they 
had  proved  was  the  impossibihty  of  conceiving  uni- 
versals  or  abstractions.  What  they  really  did  prove 
was  the  impossibility  of  conceiving  universals  or 
abstractions  as  particular  physical  objects.  The 
same  innocent  and  irrelevant  truism  had  been  tri- 
umphantly established,  some  centuries  before,  by 
Aristotle  against  Plato  in  the  TpLTo<s  avOpoiTo?.  In 
a  psychical  system  the  universal  is  primary  and  the 
particular  secondary  for  the  same  reason  that  in  a 
physical  system  the  reverse  is  true  —  that  reason 
being  that  the  quantity  and  plurality  of  a  physical 
system  underlie  its  quality  and  unity,  while  in  the 
psychical  system  it  is  the  unity  and  quality  that  are 
fundamental.  That  the  mind  is  the  place  of  forms 
is  one  of  the  well-known  criteria  for  distinguishing 
it  from  matter,  and  is  directly  deducible  from  the 
differentia  that  we  have  adopted. 

A  second  and  even  more  familiar  characteristic 
of  the  psychosis  is  its  capacity  for  past  and  future 
events,  for  memory  images,  and  for  ideals.  In  the 
physical  world  the  present  is  real;  the  past  was 
and  the  future  will  be  real,  but  only  the  present 
is.  It  is  then  a  distinguishing  feature  of  tlie 
psychical  that  in  each  present  moment  of  its 
flow  the  past  not  only  was  but  is  present  —  as 
remembered,  and  the  future  not  only  will  be  but  is 
present  —  as  imagined.  We  might  put  it  this  way : 
at  or  in  each  moment  of  physical  time  only  that 
one  moment  is  present,  while  within  the  unity  of 


WM.   PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     115 

each  moment  of  psychical  time,  many  other  mo- 
ments both  past  and  future  are  present.  This 
curious  capacity  of  the  psychical  to  extend  in  time, 
although  it  has  been  made  the  basis  for  the  time- 
less egoes  of  subjective  idealism,  is  in  no  wise  in- 
compatible with  the  mind's  presence  in  time.  It  is 
this  extra  dimension  which  more  than  any  one  thing 
gives  to  the  conscious  being  his  supreme  advantage 
in  competing  with  beings  not  conscious,  enabling 
him,  as  it  does,  to  respond  to  the  impulse  of  the 
moment  in  the  light  of  past  knowledge  and  future 
needs.  And  yet  this  temporal  unity  of  specious 
past  and  future  in  each  actual  present  is  but  an- 
other aspect  of  the  unity  of  my  perception  of  one 
part  of  the  spatial  field  with  my  perception  of  the 
other  parts  of  that  field. 

A  third  of  these  subsidiary  marks  of  the  psychi- 
cal, and  one  closely  consequent  upon  tlie  last,  is 
the  purposive  or  teleological  character  of  mental 
causality  as  contrasted  with  the  "blind"  or  me- 
chanical causality  of  the  physical  world.  The 
goal  of  a  conscious  process  is  present  from  the  be- 
ginning and  takes  an  active  part  in  selecting  the 
links  that  lead  up  to  its  realization.  This  would 
be  an  impossible  paradox  in  a  purely  material 
system,  for  the  future  as  such  has  no  physical  ex- 
istence except  at  the  moment  when  it  ceases  to  be 
future;  and  all  causes  act  on  the  instant,  ah  extra 
or  mechanically,  the  telos  of  the  process  playing 
no  part  in  its  own  actualization.     In  a  psychosis 


116      CONSCIOUSNESS   AS   ENERGY 

the  individual  elements  instead  of  being  self- 
existent  constituents  of  an  aggregate  are  each  of 
them  subordinate  both  in  their  being  and  in  their 
behavior  to  the  structure  or  form  of  their  system. 
If  the  tendency  of  the  system  as  a  whole  be  identi- 
cal with  the  tendency  of  one  of  its  elements,  then 
in  the  ensuing  process  that  element  will  have  a 
very  peculiar  prominence.  Though  not  neces- 
sarily strong  in  its  own  right  it  will  act  catalytically 
as  a  kind  of  centre  about  which  the  other  elements 
will  gradually  be  distributed.  A  possibility-element 
in  a  psychosis  differs  from  a  fact- element  in  not 
being  able  to  maintain  itself  except  by  aid  of  other 
elements.  When  we  experience  a  future  ideal  in 
process  of  gradually  attaining  to  what  we  call  actu- 
alization, we  note  its  passage  from  a  parasitic  or 
dependent  position  in  our  psychosis  to  a  status  of 
self-dependence  and  self- existence.  And  when 
the  process  is  voluntary  we  perceive  the  other  ele- 
ments contributing  to  this  change  of  status  in  re- 
sponse to  the  demands  of  the  system  as  a  whole. 
Factuality,  indeed,  differs  from  possibility  not 
merely  as  present  and  past  differ  from  future,  but 
as  the  fixed  and  must-be-admitted  differ  from  the 
dismissible- at- pleasure.  Facts  are.  They  are 
also  stubborn.  Ideals  are  unborn  things  of  the 
future;  they  dwell  dimly  in  the  conceptual  fringe 
of  our  consciousness  and  clamor  or  plead  accord- 
ing to  their  natures  for  us  to  incarnate  them  in  its 
perceptual  nucleus  of  fact.    Teleological  causation 


WM.   PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     117 

is  not  then  the  mere  influence  of  a  conceived  future 
element  upon  other  elements  of  the  psychosis.  Self- 
active  and  self-directive,  it  is  a  movement  of  crys- 
tallization on  the  part  of  the  psychosis  as  a  whole 
towards  and  around  one  of  its  own  members  —  a, 
movement  in  which  the  factual  elements  are,  de- 
spite their  individual  tendencies,  made  to  adapt 
themselves  to  the  reception  into  their  own  order 
of  the  element  which,  though  present  with  them,  is 
nevertheless  future  and  so  of  a  different  order. 

Thus,  inadequately,  I  have  attempted  to  depict 
the  three  traditional  marks  by  which  conscious- 
ness is  contrasted  with  the  real  though  passing 
show  of  its  physical  objects.  These  marks  of 
mind  were  (1)  its  capacity  for  forms  or  universals; 
(2)  its  capacity  for  the  non-actual  things  of  the 
past  and  future,  and  (3)  its  capacity  for  self- 
directed  and  teleological  causality :  —  psychical 
realism  versus  physical  nominalism  ;  psychical  time- 
extension  versiLS  physical  flux;  psychical  finahty 
versus  physical  mechanism.  I  have  tried  further 
to  show  that  these  three  capacities  are  merely  three 
different  expressions  of  that  general  character  of 
the  psychical  or  private  aspect  of  experience  which 
I  accepted  as  the  basis  of  its  definition,  viz.,  its  es- 
sential unity  and  indivisibility  as  based  upon  the 
primacy  of  the  structure  or  form  of  the  system  con- 
sidered collectively  as  a  whole  over  the  plurality  of 
its  elements  considered  distributively  as  an  aggre- 
gate.    We  have  now  to  take  the  second  step  in  our 


118      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

problem  and  to  investigate  the  process  in  which  the 
events  of  a  psychosis  are  consequent  upon  physical 
events  in  the  brain. 


II 

Consciousness  from  Without:  Intensive   Sensation 
and  Kinetic  Stimulus 

We  are  at  the  outset  confronted  with  a  certain 
postulate  or  assumption,  adopted  by  the  Cartesians 
and  by  almost  all  later  philosophers.  The  assump- 
tion was  as  natural  and  excusable  as  it  was  false 
and  mischievous;  unless  it  can  be  refuted  any 
attempt  to  solve  the  psychophysical  problem  must 
appear  futile.  This  momentous  postulate  is  the 
expression  of  a  twofold  exaggeration  of  that  dis- 
tinction between  psychical  and  physical  which  has 
been  described  above.  Direct  experience  together 
with  profound  insight  into  scientific  method  con- 
vinced Descartes  that  matter  was  fundamentally 
quantitative  or  spatial,  infinitely  divisible,  and 
controlled  by  mechanical  law,  and  that  mind,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  teleological,  indivisible,  and 
qualitative.  In  the  first  flush  of  enthusiasm  over 
this  true  discovery  it  was  falsely  inferred  to  mean 
that  matter  was  nothing  but  quantitative  and  that 
mind  was  nothing  but  qualitative.  The  result  was 
a  dual  denudation  of  the  physical  and  psychical 
orders.  All  true  or  non- quantitative  qualities,  i.  e., 
all  '^secondary''  qualities  were  removed  from  the 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE    119 

material  world  and  dumped  bodily  into  the  mind, 
that  mind  being  at  the  same  time  and  from  a  similar 
motive  deprived  of  all  real  extension  and  real  pres- 
ence in  the  physical  world  of  its  objects.  And  in 
place  of  two  contrasting  relational  nexuses,  ex- 
hibiting contrasting  types  of  behavior,  there  en- 
sued the  extraordinary  conception  of  two  separate 
realms  of  events,  —  a  physical  realm  pre-empting  all 
real  space  and  over  against  this  a  psychical  realm 
which  not  being  in  space  was  nowhere  at  all, 
though  of  course  quite  "real."  The  appalhng 
dualism  thus  begotten  speedily  led  all  who  could 
clearly  realize  its  imphcations  to  abandon  any 
conception  of  a  causal  relation  between  the  two 
sundered  halves  of  the  universe.  All  true  causal- 
ity involves  a  transfer  of  influence  or  energ\'  from 
the  causal  agent  to  the  patient  on  which  the  effect 
is  produced.  But  energy  cannot  be  transferred 
from  somewhere  to  nowhere,  and  back  again  from 
the  nowhere  of  the  mind  to  the  space  of  the  brain 
and  the  physical  world.  Such  a  "transfer,"  if  it 
could  mean  anything,  would  mean  that  energy 
was  annihilated  in  sensation  and  created  in  voli- 
tion. It  was  the  recognition  of  this  implication 
that  led  quite  properly  to  the  doctrine  of  the  con- 
servation of  energy  being  invoked  as  an  additional 
argument  against  any  interaction  of  physical  and 
psychical.  Nothing  was  left  but  to  describe  the 
synchronous  and  thoroughly  correlated  occurrences 
in  the  two  realms  as  a  mysterious  relation  of  "par- 


120      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

allelism."  And  in  spite  of  the  growing  demands 
of  Darwinian  biology  on  the  one  hand  and  of 
common-sense  and  direct  experience  on  the 
other,  psychophysical  parallelism,  which  when 
properly  interpreted  means  automatism  or  the 
epiphenomality  of  consciousness,  stands  to-day 
as  the  scandalous  but  irrefutable  consequence  of 
postulating  a  material  world  without  qualities 
and  a  world  of  minds  that  lack  spatiality  and 
exist  —  nowhere. 

As  I  have  elsewhere^  argued  in  detail  against 
this  postulate,  I  may  confine  myself  here  to  a  very 
summary  statement  of  what  seem  to  me  to  be  its 
several  invalidities : 

1.  Each  man  feels  his  consciousness  to  pervade 
not  only  his  body  but  the  outer  space  in  which  his 
objects  appear.  This  immediate  revelation  in  ex- 
perience of  the  spatially  extended  nature  of  con- 
sciousness is  not  and  is  not  felt  to  be  in  the 
least  incompatible  with  its  intensive  unity  and 
indivisibility. 

2.  The  fact  that  each  consciousness  feels  itself 
to  pervade  the  visible  space  in  which  its  objects 
appear  is  not  and  is  not  felt  to  be  incompatible 
with  the  equally  intuitive  conviction  that  that  con- 
sciousness could  never  be  visible  or  in  any  way 
accessible  to  the  external  perception  of  another  ob- 
server. To  the  eye  of  such  an  external  observer 
the  space  occupied  by  consciousness  would  always 

'  The  Monist,  January,  1908,  "  Are  Mental  Processes  in  Space  ?  " 


WM.   PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     121 

appear  filled  with  the  purely  physical  objects  of 
matter  and  motion. 

3.  The  real  presence  in  physical  objects  of 
qualities  such  as  are  perceived  in  them  is  in  no 
sense  incompatible  with  the  true  belief  that  such 
qualities  are  in  themselves  inefficacious  in  the  pro- 
duction of  physical  changes,  that  they  are  each  of 
them  correlated  with  or  inherent  in  the  spatial 
and  purely  mechanical  relations  of  material  par- 
ticles, and  that  it  is  in  these  quantitative  correlates 
of  qualities  that  true  explanations  are  to  be  sought. 

Suppose,  now,  that  we  are  freed  from  the  para- 
doxical antithesis  of  consciousness  and  space, — 
how  does  the  psychophysical  problem  present  it- 
self ?  A  physical  influence  or  stimulus  which 
though  not  lacking  qualit}^  is  primarily  quantita- 
tive and  accessible  to  the  external  sense  of  many 
observers  is  transmitted  along  a  sensor}'  nerve  and 
appears  to  give  rise  to  a  sensation  or  psychical 
state  which  though  not  lacking  in  quantit}"  and 
spatiality  is  accessible  to  the  internal  perception 
of  only  one  observer.  Tliat  this  happens  is  an 
obvious  fact  easily  verifiable  in  any  experience 
and  not  to  be  got  rid  of  by  any  metaphysical  or 
methodological  theory  whatsoever.  But  can  we 
conceive  how  it  happens  ?  A  clew  to  the  answer 
is,  I  believe,  to  be  found  in  a  certain  type  of  occur- 
rence in  the  physical  world.  When  an  elastic  body 
collides  with  a  fixed  barrier,  the  motion  of  the 
body  gradually  decreases  to  zero  and  then  begins 


122      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

to  increase  again  in  an  opposite  direction  up  to 
almost  its  original  amount.  At  the  moment  prior 
to  the  rebound  there  is  no  motion  in  any  direction ; 
for  before  a  reflected  motion  southward  can  begin, 
the  incident  northward  motion  must  wholly  cease. 
The  motion  in  the  world  is  not  conserved  in  the 
sense  of  being  the  same  in  amount  at  every  mo- 
ment of  existence.  But  energy  is  supposed  to  be 
conserved  in  just  this  sense.  Hence,  energy  is  of 
two  kinds,  of  which  visible  motion  is  one;  and  it 
is  only  the  sum  of  the  two  phases  that  is  constant. 
The  energy  which  is  not  motion  but  into  which 
and  from  which  motion  passes  is  called  potential. 
Naturally,  the  nature  of  this  invisible  type  of  energy 
is  a  question  of  some  interest.  There  are,  I  under- 
stand, three  theories  of  its  nature.  (1)  There  is 
the  theory  that  it  is  some  sort  of  invisible  motion 
(other  than  heat)  of  the  particles  of  a  body  into 
which  the  molar  motion  is  transformed.  This 
appears  untenable  for  the  reason  that  precisely 
the  same  problem  will  necessarily  recur  in  connec- 
tion with  these  particles,  no  matter  how  tiny  they 
are  made  or  how  often  we  subdivide  them.  Two 
particles  collide,  lose  their  motions,  and  regain  them 
in  opposite  directions.  What  becomes  of  the  energy 
of  these  little  motions  during  the  moment  of  their 
redirection?  (2)  There  is  the  theory  that  the  kin- 
etic energy  of  elastic  bodies  prior  to  coUision  passes 
at  the  moment  of  collision  into  nothing  and  comes 
out  again  from  nothing  quite  fresh,  and  unchanged 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE    123 

in  form  or  quantity.  This  is  the  view  of  potential 
energy  that  seems  most  in  favor  at  present.  Ac- 
cording to  it,  potential  energy  is  really  nothing  but 
potential.  It  is  in  no  sense  actual,  but  is  just  the 
sheer  possibility  of  a  certain  quantity  of  motion. 
In  favor  of  this  conception  it  might  be  said,  I 
suppose,  that  potential  energy  is  not  and  from  its 
very  nature  cannot  be  perceptible  to  external  ob- 
servers ;  that  it  is  consequently  not  actual  in  any 
intelligible  sense.  And  again,  that  to  consider  it 
as  actual  would  be,  if  not  absurd,  at  least  useless, 
for  it  is  only  measurable  indirectly,  in  terms  of 
the  motion  of  which  it  is  the  promise.  (3)  There 
is  finally  the  older  view  that  potential  energy  is 
stress  or  force;  that  as  such  it  is  just  as  actual 
as  the  motion  from  which  it  has  come,  and  into 
which  it  will  pass;  that  it  is  "potential"  only  with 
respect  to  motion,  and  that  motion  might  with 
equal  propriety  be  called  potential  energy  of  stress. 
In  favor  of  this  third  view  it  might  be  said :  I. 
That  it  has  never  been  empirically  refuted,  is  still 
held  by  some  physicists  and  has  in  the  past  been 
held  by  men  of  the  insight  of  Faraday.  II.  That 
potential  energy,  though  not  visible  or  externally 
perceptible,  is  nevertheless  definitely  and  directly 
perceivable  internally  or  by  participation  in  it 
through  what  is  inaptly  called  the  "muscular 
sense  " ;  and  that  it  is  absurd  to  speak  of  the  stress 
quality  revealed  by  this  internal  or  muscular  sense 
as  being  less  real  or  more  anthropomorphic  than 


124      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

the  motion  quality  revealed  by  the  visual  sense. 
III.  That  energy  in  the  form  of  stress,  while  most 
easily  measurable  in  terms  of  the  motion  which  it 
will  yield  is  nevertheless  capable  of  as  precise 
mathematical  formulation  as  that  motion  itself,  viz., 
as  mas,  or  the  product  of  the  mass,  the  accel- 
eration and  the  space  through  which  that  accelera- 
tion obtains.  In  short,  the  third  view,  according 
to  which  force  is  a  real  phase  of  energy,  is,  first, 
logically  necessary  in  order  to  avoid  the  unthink- 
able paradox  of  a  real  motion  passing  into  and 
issuing  from  nonentity ;  it  is,  second,  a  direct  revela- 
tion of  experience;  it  is,  third,  capable  in  its  own 
right  of  mathematical  symbohzation. 

When  we  formulate  kinetic  or  motion  energy 
as  J  m-v^,  we  recognize  it  to  be  the  product  of 
the  mass  and  the  integral  (with  respect  to  velocity) 
of  the  velocity.  In  the  same  way  potential  energj^ 
formulated  as  mas  may  be  recognized  as  the 
derivative  (with  respect  to  time)  of  the  velocity. 
Acceleration  is  the  derivative  of  the  same  func- 
tion of  which  J  -u^  is  the  integral,  viz.,  the  function 

ds' 

dt 

*  Of  course  equal  quantities  of  the  potential  energy  denoted  hy  m-  a-  s 
may  differ  in  kind  according  to  the  relative  values  of  the  three  factors,  (m) 
(a)  and  («).  And  leaving  aside  variations  in  the  mass  factor,  we  should  have 
two  types  of  potential  energy ;  one  would  be  of  the  type  instanced  by  a  sys- 
tem of  widely  separated  bodies  attracting  one  another  by  the  force  of  gra\dty, 
and  the  other  of  the  type  presented  by  a  compressed  spring.  In  the  former 
type  a  relatively  small  acceleration,  (a),  extends  through  a  relatively  great 
space,  («),  while  in  the  latter  a  relatively  great  acceleration  (a)  acts  through 
the  relatively  small  space  (s)  occupied  by  the  spring;  the  product  {a -a), 
however,  being  the  same  in  both  cases. 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     125 

If  one  place  his  hand  between  a  fixed  spring  and 
a  body  moving  uniformly  into  collision  with  it, 
he  can  get  as  clear  and  direct  a  perception  of  this 
continuous  transfer  of  motion  into  a  stress  which  is 
felt  to  be  homogeneous  though  not  identical  with 
it,  as  he  can  of  any  other  phenomenon  w^hatever. 
And  the  mathematical  homogeneity  of  ^  m  •  if 
and  mas  accords  with  this  immediately  felt 
homogeneity  of  motion  and  stress.  What  is  the 
a  priori  warrant  for  believing  that  reality  can  con- 
tain only  integrals  of  velocities  and  not  their  deriva- 
tives ?  Of  course  stress  from  its  very  nature  can 
never  be  revealed  to  the  visual  sense,  while  motion 
can.  But  is  it  not  an  over-enthusiasm  for  the  in- 
strumental excellence  of  the  retina  to  regard  it  as 
having  a  monopoly  in  revealing  the  qualities  of  the 
actual  ?  To  be  consistent  in  carrying  out  this  apo- 
theosis of  the  retinal  and  condemnation  of  the  mus- 
cular sense,  we  should  have  to  define  the  inertia 
and  the  gravitational  property  of  mass  itself  in 
terms  of  the  motion  with  which  they  can  undoubt- 
edly be  correlated.  But  I  cannot  see  how  such  a 
reduction  of  mechanics  to  a  geometry  of  the  motion 
of  shadows  or  visible  forms  would  possess  any  ex- 
clusive ontological  validity,  even  if  Professor  Karl 
Pearson  be  right  as  to  its  superior  methodological 
elegance.^  Let  us  assume,  then,  that  potential 
energy  or  stress  is  as  real  as  kinetic  energy  and  that 

*  Cf.  "The  Grammar  of  Science,"  especially  chapters  VI  and  VITI, 
in  which  the  reality  of  force  is  attacked  as  an  exploded  superstition  and 
even  mass  is  defined  exclusively  in  terms  of  motion. 


126      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

consequently  we  should  speak  of  an  intensive  rather 
than  of  a  potential  phase  of  energy.  I  wish  now 
to  point  out  certain  very  curious  resemblances 
between  this  intensive  energy  and  that  which  from 
the  point  of  view  of  introspection  we  defined  as  the 
psychical. 

The  first  and  perhaps  the  most  striking  of  these 
resemblances  is  the  essential  invisibility  or  privacy 
which  characterizes  both  energy  in  its  intensive 
phase  and  also  the  non-physical  elements  of  con- 
sciousness. Leibniz  reminds  us  that  the  most  pow- 
erful microscope  could  not,  if  applied  to  the  brain 
of  a  fellow-man,  disclose  anything  of  his  thoughts 
and  feelings.  We  may  remind  ourselves  that  the 
most  powerful  microscope,  if  applied  to  a  com- 
pressed spring  or  to  the  space  of  a  magnetic  or  of  a 
gravitational  field,  would  be  equally  unable  to  dis- 
close the  stresses  therein.  As  objects  of  external 
or  visual  perception,  potential  energy  and  the  psy- 
chical are  both  of  them  non-existent.  We  can  feel 
stress  only  by  participating  in  it,  just  as  we  could 
feel  our  neighbor's  toothache  only  by  participating 
in  it  through  some  such  inter-organic,  nerve-graft- 
ing device  as  Professor  Pearson  has  suggested. 
From  the  external  point  of  view,  potential  energy 
and  my  neighbor's  toothache  are  ejects  which  I 
must  postulate  in  order  to  explain  the  otherwise 
inexplicable  hiatuses  in  the  series  of  visual  percep- 
tions which  originate  from  and  terminate  in  them. 

Secondly,  both  consciousness  and  intensive  en- 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     127 

erg}'  seem  to  pervade  the  space  of  the  things  they 
influence,  and  in  this  both  resemble  matter.  But 
in  thus  extending  in  space  they  each  of  them  seem 
to  forfeit  thereby  no  whit  of  their  pecuhar  unity  and 
indivisibihty,  and  in  this  both  of  them  differ  from 
matter.  You  cannot  imagine  your  consciousness, 
although  it  pervades  the  space  of  its  perceptual 
objects,  being  divided  into  pieces  or  composed  of 
them.  No  more  can  you  imagine  dividing  into  sep- 
arate pieces  the  elastic  stress  that  pervades  a  spring 
or  the  gravitational  stress  that  pervades  the  plane- 
tary system. 

Thirdly,  we  pointed  out  in  the  first  section  of  this 
paper,  how,  from  the  essential  primacy  of  unity  over 
divisibility  in  a  psychical  system,  there  followed 
that  curious  conformity  in  the  behavior  of  its  ele- 
ments to  the  structural  form  of  the  system  as  a 
whole  which  was  manifested  in  the  teleological  na- 
ture of  psychical  processes.  Now,  consider  the 
behavior  of  a  swarm  of  moving  iron  filings  when 
they  come  within  the  field  of  a  magnet.  Prior  to 
their  advent  in  the  field,  each  is  in  its  existence  rela- 
tively autonomous  as  respects  the  others,  though 
subservient  to  the  impulses  received  in  actual  im- 
pact with  them  (mechanism).  Once  within  the 
magnetic  field,  however,  the  filings  forget,  as  it 
were,  their  individual  strifes,  and  each  in  relative 
indifference  to  the  bumps  of  its  fellows  assumes  the 
position  demanded  of  it  by  the  structure  of  the 
field  into  which  it  has  come.     The  formless  chaos 


128      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

of  filings  gives  place  to  the  ordered  system  which  so 
surprisingly  incarnates,  or  bodies  forth  to  the  eye, 
the  invisible  and  indivisible  lines  of  magnetic  stress. 
Fourthly,  the  conditions  under  which  a  stimulus  is 
followed  by  a  sensation  happen  also  to  be  conditions 
under  which  energy  passes  from  a  kinetic  into  an  in- 
tensive phase.  Perceptions  are  presumed  to  arise 
synchronously  with  the  redirection  in  the  central 
nervous  system  of  afferent  currents  into  efferent 
channels.  When  this  process  of  redirection  is  pro- 
longed by  reason  of  the  many  conflicts  with  the 
cerebral  association  currents  induced  by  the  affer- 
ent intruders,  then  the  consciousness  is  prolonged, 
keen,  and  complex.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  by 
reason  either  of  innate  adjustments  or  of  long 
practice,  the  journey  through  the  central  labyrinth 
is  quick,  smooth,  and  direct,  then  the  consciousness, 
if  present  at  all,  is  simple,  faint,  and  brief.  Note 
that  the  condition  for  motion  passing  into  stress  is 
always  that  it  meet  with  some  obstacle  by  which  it 
is  redirected,  and  that  the  proportion  of  the  energy 
that  becomes  potential  depend  on  the  degree  of 
change  in  the  motion's  direction.  If  a  ball  be 
thrown  perpendicularly  against  a  wall,  the  whole 
of  the  incident  motion  must  disappear  before  the 
reflected  motion  can  ensue.  But  if  it  be  thrown 
obliquely  then  only  so  much  of  the  motion  can  pass 
into  stress  as  is  equal  to  that  imaginary  compo- 
nent of  the  motion,  which  is  normal  to  the  wall. 
Several  observers  might  conceivably  follow  with 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     129 

their  eyes  the  nerve  current  as  it  traversed  the 
circuit  from  sensory  origin  to  motor  terminus,  and 
at  the  very  moments  when  the  whole  or  some  part  of 
its  kinetic  energy  did,  by  reason  of  a  change  in  its 
direction  due  to  the  interference  of  rival  currents 
of  cerebral  origin,  disappear  into  an  intensive  or 
potential  phase :  —  at  those  same  moments  there 
would  be  reported  a  psychical  fact  accessible  only 
to  the  observation  of  the  one  person  through  whose 
brain  the  stimulus  was  passing. 

"When  a  thing  looks  like  a  frog  and  acts  like  a 
frog  and  croaks  like  a  frog,  we  call  it  a  frog."  And 
on  the  strength  of  the  four  fundamental  resem- 
blances described  above  I  propose  as  a  possible 
solution  of  the  psychophysical  problem  the  fol- 
lowing theory :  What  7,  from  within,  would  call 
my  sensations  are  neither  more  nor  less  than  what 
you,  from  without,  would  describe  as  the  forms  of 
potential  energy  to  which  the  kinetic  energies  of 
neural  stimuli  would  necessarily  give  rise  in  pass- 
ing through  my  brain. 

We  do  not  as  yet  know  enough  about  the  nature 
of  the  neural  stimulus  or  "current"  to  form  a  sat- 
isfactory conception  of  the  manner  of  its  transfor- 
mation into  the  potential  phase.  If  it  be  some 
form  of  vibration  or  ordinary  wave  motion,  then 
the  change  is  of  the  same  sort  as  that  undergone  by 
a  beam  of  light  in  changing  from  the  incident  to  the 
reflected  path.  If  on  the  other  hand  the  nerve 
"current"  be  electrical  in  its  nature,  resembling, 

9 


130      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

as  has  recently  been  suggested,  the  relatively  slow 
progress  of  energy  along  a  telegraphic  cable,  then 
its  transformation  into  potential  energy  might  per- 
haps be  likened  to  that  wrought  by  an  electro- 
magnet in  which  a  portion  of  the  energy  of  the 
electric  current  is  drained  off  into  the  potential 
form  of  a  magnetic  stress  in  the  surrounding  field. 

I  hasten,  however,  to  answer  an  objection  which 
is  obvious  and  which  might  appear  crushing.  We 
know,  it  may  be  said,  what  force  is  —  at  least  if  we 
choose,  as  I  have  done,  to  give  that  name  to  the 
quality  revealed  by  the  muscular  sense.  And  we 
know  what  a  sensation  in  general  is.  They  are 
plainly  different,  and  to  identify  one  with  the  other 
is  sheer  silliness.  It  is  like  saying  with  the  materi- 
alist that  a  sensation  is  a  mode  of  motion.  To  iden- 
tify odor  with  color,  or  pain  with  sound,  would  be 
futilities  of  the  same  kind. 

To  this  objection  two  answers  may  be  made. 
First,  it  will  be  remembered  that  when  we  aban- 
doned the  modern  dualistic  postulate  of  a  non- 
spatial  consciousness,  we  abandoned  also  its 
equally  vicious  correlate  —  the  postulate  of  an 
abstract  physical  world  made  up  of  mere  quanti- 
tative relations  and  lacking  all  the  specific  natures 
or  secondary  qualities  that  are  correlated  with 
those  relations.  Now,  if  we  return  to  the  older 
view  of  common-sense,  according  to  which  every 
physical  thing  and  every  motion  or  stimulus  pro- 
ceeding from  it  has  correlated  with  it  a  specific 


WM.  PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     131 

nature  —  not  a  substantial  form  but  rather  a  form 
inhering  in  the  motion  that  carries  it  —  then  the 
change  of  the  kinetic  energy  of  the  stimulus  into 
the  potential  energy  of  the  sensation  will  not  be  a 
mysterious  change  of  sheer  quantity  into  sheer  qual- 
ity, but  only  the  change  into  a  qualitative  form  of 
stress  of  a  similarly  qualitative  form  of  motion. 
So  what  we  perceive  as  mere  undifferentiated  stress 
is  simply  the  general  "substance"  of  sensations, 
i.  e.,  the  basic  and  generic  quality  common  to 
them  all,  the  different  degrees  of  which  are  felt  as 
the  differences  of  intensity  to  which  every  sen- 
sation is  alike  susceptible.  Stress  as  psychical 
substance  would  thus  be  related  to  particular  sen- 
sations precisely  as  extended  matter  is  related  to 
particular  objects.  All  physical  objects  are  ex- 
perienced as  having  the  general  quality  of  ma- 
teriality in  addition  to  the  specific  qualities  by 
which  they  differ. 

But,  secondly,  it  may  also  be  said  in  explanation 
of  the  difference  between  mere  stress  and  the  rich 
variety  of  our  feelings  and  sensations  that  what 
we  have  so  far  been  considering  as  potential  energy 
and  formulating  as  mas  is  only  one,  and  that  the 
simplest  and  lowest  of  the  intensive  phases  into 
which  kinetic  energy  may  pass  and  from  which 
it  may  come.  Acceleration  is  only  the  first  deriva- 
tive of  velocity  with  respect  to  time;  and  if  an 
energy  quantum  can  pass  from  the  extensive  phase 
represented   by   the  integral   of  a  velocity    (J  ^) 


132       CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

into  the  intensive  phase  represented  by  its  first 

derivative  (  — ),  it  would  seem  that  it  might  on 

occasion  pass  equally  well  into  any  or  all  of  the 
infinity  of  higher  phases  of  intensive  energy 
symbolized  by  the  series  of  velocity  derivatives 
of  higher  order  than  the  first,  viz., 

fd'^v  d^v  d*v  dy  \ 

\dP'         W         di"     '  '  '  '     df*      '  '  '  J 

The  qualities  denoted  by  these  higher  derivatives 
would  have  no  place  or  meaning  in  the  physical 
world  except  as  higher  orders  of  the  potentiality 
of  motion,  but  they  could  well  exist  as  actualities 
in  the  intensive  sphere  of  the  psychical.  They 
would  constitute  those  tertiary  contents  of  con- 
sciousness which  even  the  most  realistic  of  realists 
can  hardly  imagine  to  exist  apart  from  some 
awareness  of  them.  I  refer  to  such  things  as  love, 
envy,  fear,  and  hate,  and  the  whole  inexhaustible 
host  of  the  finer  forms  and  nuances  of  these. 

And  here,  then,  in  the  answer  to  what  might  have 
seemed  a  fatal  objection,  we  find  a  fifth  fundamental 
resemblance  between  the  psychical  and  the  inten- 
sive phase  of  energy  with  which  our  theory 
seeks  to  identify  it.  Any  given  psychosis  con- 
tains only  a  tiny  fraction  of  the  totality  of  physi- 
cal events,  but  the  psychical  in  general  has  the 
capacity  not  only  for  all  perceptible  physical  objects 
but  also  for  the  whole  assemblage  of  thoughts  and 


WM.   PEPPERRELL  MONTAGUE     133 

feelings  about  those  objects.  This  consideration 
alone  would  be  sufficient  to  disprove  a  parallelism 
of  the  "double-aspect"  type.  For  the  assemblage 
of  possible  psychical  elements  or  forms  of  inten- 
sive energy  denoted  by  the  higher  derivatives  is 
to  the  assemblage  of  possible  physical  events  or 
kinetic  energies  denoted  merely  by  the  first  order 
of  integrals  as  a  multi-dimensional  manifold  is  to 
the  uni-dimensional  manifold  that  forms  the 
lowest  and  limiting  of  its  *' cross-sections."  Or 
to  express  the  same  thing  in  another  way,  we  can 
say  that  the  physical  world  of  public  objects  is  the 
indefinitely  extending  and  ever-present  surface 
of  contact  from  which  originate  and  in  which 
terminate  the  series  of  intensive  or  psychical  events, 
these  latter  being  private  and  insulated  from  one 
another  except  in  so  far  as  they  participate  in  the 
common  physical  order.  Or,  finally,  we  might 
liken  the  relation  between  physical  and  psychical 
to  that  obtaining  between  the  one  kind  of  wealth 
embodied  in  money,  and  the  totality  of  objects 
of  wealth  which  are  being  constantly  interchanged 
and  mutually  evaluated  through  the  agency  of  that 
money  as  a  universal  medium  of  circulation. 

We  found  at  the  outset  of  this  investigation  that 
the  problem  of  defining  consciousness  would  prop- 
erly involve  the  solution  of  three  subsidiary  prob- 
lems :  (1 )  The  definition  of  the  psychical  as  it 
appears  to  introspection  or  from  within,  a  distinc- 
tion   between    psychosis    and    hylosis    as    directly 


134      CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  ENERGY 

presented  in  the  experience  of  each  of  us.  (2)  The 
definition  of  consciousness  as  it  appears  or  is  in- 
ferred from  without,  as  centering  in  the  brain  of 
another  man  and  constituting  the  essentially  in- 
visible origin  and  terminus  of  his  nerve  currents ; 
the  consideration  of  which  is  the  psychophysical 
problem  of  the  relation  of  stimulus  to  sensation. 
(3)  A  comparison  of  the  properties  of  psychical 
systems  with  the  properties  of  living  systems  that 
would  throw  light  on  the  bio-psychical  problem 
of  why  it  is  that  consciousness  must  have  as  its 
matrix  a  growing  and  reproducing  organism  of 
protoplasmic  matter. 

I  have  endeavored  in  the  first  and  second  sec- 
tions to  present  a  conception  of  consciousness  as 
energy  that  seemed  to  me  to  meet  the  demands 
of  the  first  two  of  the  three  problems  just  named. 
The  third  problem  must  be  omitted,  though  its 
consideration,  would,  I  hope,  serve  to  supplement 
and  in  some  measure  to  clarify  and  concretely 
corroborate  what  has  here  been  said. 


PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 


PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

By  Frederick  J.  E.  Woodbridge 

What  perception  is,"  says  John  Locke,  "every 
one  will  know  better  by  reflecting  on  what  he  does 
himself,  when  he  sees,  hears,  feels,  etc.,  or  thinks, 
than  by  any  discourse  of  mine.  Whoever  reflects 
on  what  passes  in  his  own  mind  cannot  miss  it. 
And  if  he  does  not  reflect,  all  the  words  in  the 
world  cannot  make  him  have  any  notion  of  it. 
This  is  certain,  that  whatever  alterations  are  made 
in  the  body,  if  they  reach  not  the  mind ;  whatever 
impressions  are  made  on  the  outward  parts,  if  they 
are  not  taken  notice  of  within,  there  is  no  percep- 
tion. Fire  may  burn  our  bodies  with  no  other 
effect  than  it  does  a  billet,  unless  the  motion  be 
continued  to  the  brain,  and  there  the  sense  of  heat, 
or  idea  of  pain,  be  produced  in  the  mind ;  wherein 
consists  actual  perception."  ^ 

Psychologists  since  Locke  have  often  thought  of 
perception  more  narrowly,  but  his  words  still  serve 
to  point  out  the  different  attitudes  towards  the  fact 
that  to  know  our  world  we  must  perceive  and  re- 
flect upon  it,  which  have  been  conspicuous  in  mod- 

'  "Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding,"  edited  by  A.  C.  Eraser, 
Vol.  I,  p.  183. 

137 


138    PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

ern  inquiries  into  the  subject.  They  suggest  that 
perception  is  a  process  which  we  may  examine  by 
considering  what  we  do  when  we  see  or  hear,  and 
that  it  is  a  content,  a  result,  which  we  may,  conse- 
quently, consider  as  such,  and  about  the  nature 
and  relations  of  which  we  may  inquire.  It  is  with 
these  two  attitudes  towards  perception  that  this 
paper  is  primarily  concerned,  so  far  as  the  problem 
of  knowledge  is  affected  by  them. 


Inquiry  into  what  we  do  when  we  see  involves 
us  naturally  in  researches  into  those  physical  and 
physiological  processes  which  Democritus  seems  to 
have  been  the  first  to  formulate  with  any  great 
amount  of  completeness.  We  are  led  to  recognize 
sources  of  stimulation,  media  for  the  transmission 
of  the  stimulus,  organs  for  its  reception,  and  reac- 
tions of  the  individual  possessing  the  organs.  In 
a  particular  case,  as  in  that  of  seeing,  we  try  to 
isolate  a  particular  process  and  discover  how  it  is 
related  to  other  similar  processes.  In  short,  we 
inquire  into  the  mechanism  of  perception.  We 
deal  with  factors,  processes,  and  quantities  sup- 
posed to  be  known  or  ascertainable.  Stimulus, 
medium,  and  organ,  for  instance,  are  distinguished 
as  identifiable  factors  in  one  continuous  sphere  of 
investigation.  Any  doubt  about  their  existence, 
their  character,  or  their  mode  of  operation  tends 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  139 

to  vitiate  and  obscure  our  understanding  of  the 
mechanism  we  are  trying  to  discover.  Further, 
our  procedure  is  not  speculative,  but  experimental. 
So  far  as  possible  we  measure  the  stimulus,  the 
rate  of  its  transmission,  and  its  effect.  We  do 
what  can  be  repeated  by  others,  because  to  others 
our  method  is  intelligible  and  the  means  of  repeti- 
tion are  at  their  command.  Should  we  engage  in 
mere  suppositions,  admit  that  the  stimulus,  for 
instance,  were  not  something  given  with  which  we 
can  experiment,  but  something  assumed  to  account 
for  certain  facts,  our  laboratories  might  well  be 
closed,  and  the  mechanism  of  perception  left  for 
anyone  to  conceive  according  to  his  preferences  or 
whims.  But  it  is  precisely  such  admissions  which 
we  do  not  make.  We  may  admit  that  other  points 
of  view  may  lead  to  a  revision  of  the  ultimate 
significance  of  our  results,  but  we  never  willingly 
admit  that  the  method  and  the  factors  of  our 
investigation  are  not  intelligible,  clear,  and 
unambiguous. 

Still  further,  we  are  quite  unwilling  to  set  any 
arbitrary  limit  to  the  extent  to  which  inquiries  of 
this  nature  may  be  successfully  pursued.  What- 
ever limits  we  discover  we  set  down  to  our  igno- 
rance, to  our  lack  of  appropriate  instruments,  to 
our  failures,  but  not  to  any  restraints  due  to  the 
method  we  employ  or  to  the  nature  of  the  factors 
with  which  we  deal.  We  may  characterize  certain 
results  of  perception  as  illusions,  but  such  a  char- 


140     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

acterization  does  not  deter  us  from  inquiring  into 
their  mechanism  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  we 
inquire  into  the  mechanism  of  those  results  we 
call  normal  or  real.  We  may  even  ask,  as  Locke 
suggests,  what  we  do  when  we  think,  and  admit 
that  the  only  bar  to  our  discovery  of  the  mechan- 
ism of  thought  is  a  temporary  ignorance  which  at 
any  moment  may  be  removed.  In  general,  then, 
perception  as  a  process  defined  broadly  in  terms 
of  Locke's  general  definition  of  it  is  a  process  open 
to  experimental  inquiry  in  an  intelligible  and  un- 
ambiguous manner,  an  inquiry  which  can  be  re- 
peated, checked,  and  verified  by  anyone  who 
takes  the  pains  to  do  so.  The  result  is  a  concrete 
body  of  knowledge  steadily  increasing  in  extent 
and  definiteness,  and  gradually  accumulating  solid 
information  about  the  world  in  which  we  live.  No 
one  naturally  fails  to  grasp  its  aim,  its  method,  or 
its  import.  No  one  finds  confusion  in  it  unless 
he  departs  from  the  point  of  view  from  which  it 
is  instituted  and  proceeds  to  estimate  it  according 
to  standards  and  criteria  other  than  those  which 
are  employed  in  building  it  up. 

Similar  observations  may  be  made  about  the 
results  reached  when  we  take  the  other  attitude 
towards  perception;  when,  that  is,  we  regard  it  as 
a  content  or  product.  Naturally  we  are  now  no 
longer  concerned  with  the  process  or  mechanism 
by  which  the  content  is  attained,  but  solely  with 
the  facts  which  are  the  outcome  of  that  process. 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  141 

When  we  see,  certain  things  are  done,  but  some- 
thing also  is  seen.  That  which  we  see  we  now 
call  a  perception,  and  in  general  we  may  use  the 
term  "perceptions"  to  denote  whatever  may  be 
the  objects  of  our  regard.  Now  these  perceptions 
we  may  enumerate.  We  may  classify  them.  We 
may  analyze  them  into  such  elements  as  we  may 
be  able  to  discover.  We  may  find  out  how  these 
elements  are  related  to  one  another,  how  they  may 
be  combined,  how  they  modify  one  another. 
About  the  combinations  we  may  make  similar  in- 
quiries. In  short,  we  may  institute  a  wide  range 
of  investigations  into  the  things  we  perceive  with- 
out departing  from  the  point  of  view  which  takes 
these  things  simply  as  the  objects  of  our  regard, 
and  without  asking  how  we  perceive  them.  Such 
inquiries  may  be  as  free  from  speculation  and  mere 
assumptions  as  those  we  make  into  the  mechanism 
of  perception  as  a  process.  They  may  be  equally 
as  experimental.  They  may  be  kept  true  to  their 
point  of  departure  and  yield  concrete  bodies  of 
knowledge  of  great  value.  The  results  attained 
are  accessible  to  anyone  who  cares  to  review  them. 
The  methods  and  experiments  by  which  they  are 
attained  can  be  repeated,  they  can  be  checked 
and  verified  at  any  point  desired.  We  find  no 
ambiguity  or  confusion  in  the  knowledge  they 
afford  us  so  long  as  we  do  not  depart  from  the 
point  of  view  from  which  these  particular  in- 
quiries are  instituted. 


142     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

When  we  speak  of  those  bodies  of  knowledge 
which  result  when  we  regard  perception  solely  as 
a  content  or  product,  we  are  apt  to  think  prima- 
rily of  analytic  and  descriptive  psychology.  But 
it  is  clear  that  they  may  not  be  so  restricted.  They 
comprise,  in  fact,  by  far  the  greater  part  of  what 
we  know.  The  astronomer,  the  biologist,  the 
chemist,  the  historian,  the  student  of  literature  — 
to  mention  only  a  few  instances  —  are  all  en- 
gaged in  increasing  our  knowledge  of  what  our 
perceptions  are  and  how  they  are  related  to  one 
another.  Their  studies  are  not  prefaced  by  an  ex- 
amination of  how  we  perceive.  They  take  their 
material  as  so  much  given  stuff,  and  then  proceed 
to  tell  us  what,  when  so  taken,  they  discover  it  to 
be.  If  they  are  invited  first  to  examine  the  mechan- 
ism of  perception,  they  regard  the  invitation  as  im- 
pertinent and  irrelevant.  They  have  found  such 
an  examination  to  be  unnecessary,  and  so  believe 
that  they  can  rightfully  neglect  it.  Even  when  their 
attention  is  called  to  the  fact  that  the  processes  by 
which  we  perceive  have  important  bearings  on 
what  we  perceive,  they  find  that  their  observations 
can  be  controlled  by  well-known  methods,  by 
putting  them,  for  instance,  in  the  context  which 
theories  of  probability,  based  on  a  number  of  ob- 
servations, afford.  They  can  thus  make  their 
observations  approach  any  degree  of  theoretical 
accuracy  desired. 

We  should,  doubtless,  count  among  the  bodies 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  143 

of  knowledge  which  result  when  perception  is  re- 
garded as  a  product,  more  than  history^  and  the 
greater  part  of  natural  science.  For,  naturally,  we 
may  make  these  bodies  of  knowledge  themselves 
objects  of  investigation,  asking  after  their  general 
constitution,  the  manner  of  their  building  up,  and 
the  grounds  which  lead  us  to  view  them  with 
confidence.  These  are  problems  with  which  logic 
is  concerned.  How  far  they  constitute  the  full 
extent  and  nature  of  logical  theory  may  be  left  for 
the  present  purpose  undecided.  But  it  is  clear  that 
a  logic  which  would  deal  with  them  successfully 
would  be  a  very  comprehensive  science.  When  we 
should  know  how  different  bodies  of  knowledge 
differ,  how  far  these  differences  are  due  to  mate- 
rial, to  method,  and  to  aim,  when  we  should  know 
how  these  bodies  of  knowledge  are  built  up  from 
what  we  perceive,  and  with  what  degree  of  confi- 
dence they  may  be  entertained,  we  should  then  have 
largely  satisfied  the  demands  which  our  interest  in 
logic  occasions.  Such  a  logic,  like  the  bodies  of 
knowledge  it  reviewed,  would  be  experimental,  it 
would  itself  be  capable  of  review  by  anyone  in- 
terested without  involving  the  reviewer  in  ambig- 
uous assumptions.  It  would  simply  say  to  him, 
Such  and  such  is  the  case  with  these  bodies  of 
knowledge;  examine  them  for  yourself  and  you 
will  find  it  so  or  be  able  to  indicate  where  inaccu- 
racy exists.  It  is  quite  inconceivable  that  such  a 
logic  could  afford  matter  for  debate  rather  than 


144     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

for  investigation.  It  would  hardly  be  called  by  the 
names  of  those  who  worked  at  it,  or  be  the  posses- 
sion of  a  "school"  or  a  "philosophy."  It  would 
constitute  a  body  of  common  knowledge  which 
investigators  could  enlarge  and  thereby  enlarge 
their  own  reputations.  In  proportion  as  it  kept 
clear  its  title  to  common  knowledge,  admitting 
review  and  repetition  of  experiments  at  all  points, 
it  would  be  free  from  ambiguity  and  confusion. 

It  seems  clear,  further,  that  the  point  of  view 
under  consideration  could  yield  a  metaphysics 
which,  like  history,  the  sciences,  and  logic,  could 
claim  to  be  experimental  and  constitute  a  body  of 
common  knowledge.  For  it  may  well  be  that  the 
things  which  we  perceive,  when  taken  in  as  com- 
prehensive totals  as  we  can  grasp,  present  certain 
general  features  of  character  and  connection  which 
we  tend  to  disregard  or  overlook  when  the  same 
things  are  taken  less  comprehensively  and  com- 
pletely. Such  characters  and  connections  have 
been  historical  themes  of  metaphysics.  When 
looked  for  in  the  world  of  concrete  perceptions 
they  may  not  constitute  all  that  historical  metaphys- 
ics has  been  pleased  to  investigate,  but  the  experi- 
mental restriction  cannot  obscure  the  magnitude 
or  importance  of  the  body  of  knowledge  which 
might  result.  For,  most  assuredly,  if  there  are  gen- 
eral types  of  existence  among  the  things  we  per- 
ceive and  general  types  of  connection,  the  clear 
definition  of  their  characters  and  modes  of  opera- 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  145 

lion  could  not  fail  to  be  of  importance,  or  to  afford 
problems  of  ceaseless  and  varied  interest.  A  meta- 
physics of  the  kind  suggested  would  admit  of 
natural  growth  from  generation  to  generation,  be- 
cause it  would  be  knowledge  of  the  kind  that  pur- 
sues a  common  road  and  that  can  be  repeatedly 
checked  and  reviewed. 

Bodies  of  knowledge  of  the  kind  described  by  no 
means  constitute  the  sole  results  of  our  inquiries. 
We  seek  to  supplement  them  by  hypotheses,  theo- 
ries, and  philosophical  speculations,  but  we  find 
our  vision  of  the  world  grows  clearer  thereby  only  as 
these  supplementations  are  genuinely  such.  The 
moment  they  lead  us  to  deprive  the  results  of  careful 
research  of  their  natural  character  and  purport,  these 
results  become  ambiguous  and  misleading.  We  no 
longer  remain  clear  as  to  the  information  they  in- 
tend to  convey.  When,  for  example,  Huxley  tells  us 
that  "a  sensation  is  the  equivalent  in  terms  of  con- 
sciousness for  a  mode  of  motion  of  the  matter  of  the 
sensorium,"  and  that  the  assumption  of  the  ex- 
istence of  matter  is  a  "pure  piece  of  metaphysical 
speculation,"  ^  our  thoughts  on  the  subject  of  sen- 
sation become  confused  instead  of  clear.  It  seems 
unjust  to  his  careful  investigation  to  conclude  that 
a  sensation  is  a  certain  kind  of  equivalent  for  some- 
thing the  existence  of  which  is  a  pure  piece  of  meta- 
physical speculation.     Indeed,  if  such  is  to  be  the 

*  "  Hume  :  with  Helps  to  the  Study  of  Berkeley."  New  York  :  D. 
Appleton  &  Co.,  p.  317. 

10 


146     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

outcome  of  our  study  of  sensation,  that  study  is 
hardly  worth  while.  It  does  not  clarify  the  thing 
it  intends  to  clarify.  It  obscures  it  and  makes  it 
unintelligible.  Thus  it  is  that  speculation  only  con- 
fuses experimental  knowledge  when,  by  depriving 
our  results  of  their  evident  import,  it  fails  genuinely 
to  enlarge  or  supplement  them  in  the  direction  in 
which  they  naturally  point. 

Again,  it  is  only  by  being  such  genuine  enlarge- 
ments or  supplementations  that  speculation  can  be 
controlled  and  preserved  from  mere  idiosyncrasy. 
As  pragmatism  has  now  abundantly  taught  us,  with 
fresh  insistence  on  a  piece  of  wisdom  long  familiar, 
speculations  which  can  own  no  checks  or  make  no 
differences  in  the  world  with  which  we  directly 
deal  are  matters  which  it  is  idle  to  seek  to  verify. 
We  may  accept  them,  not  because  they  give  us 
information  about  our  world  continuous  and  ho- 
mogeneous with  what  we  naturally  acquire,  but  be- 
cause of  their  inherent  interest  or  their  consonance 
with  our  moods. 

Whether,  therefore,  we  regard  perception  as  a 
process  the  mechanism  of  which  we  are  to  discover, 
or  as  a  product  comprising  the  realm  of  what 
we  perceive,  it  is  evident  that  we  may  sketch 
out  extensive  bodies  of  knowledge  consistently  and 
unambiguously  pursued  from  these  two  points  of 
view.  Even  if  the  points  of  view  differ,  the  resulting 
bodies  of  knowledge  are  of  the  same  general  char- 
acter.   They  are  what  I  have  called  experimental. 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  147 

And  by  that  I  have  meant  that  the  elements,  the 
terms,  the  relations,  the  connections,  the  qualities, 
the  quantities  —  or  whatever  terms  we  may  choose 
by  which  to  designate  the  various  things  we  study 
—  can  all  be  identified  by  anyone  who  wishes  to 
identify  them,  and  that  whatever  is  said  about  these 
things  can  be  tested  by  anyone  who  will  refer  to 
the  things  in  question.  The  bodies  of  knowledge 
are  not  mere  possibilities  which  we  may  some  day 
realize,  but  they  are  actual  bodies  of  knowledge 
already  existing  in  various  stages  of  progress.  What 
I  would  particularly  emphasize  about  them  is  their 
experimental  character  and  the  fact  that  they  are 
accepted  by  the  vast  majority  of  people  at  their  face 
value,  as  measurably  accomplishing  the  thing  they 
set  out  to  do. 

That  they  are  so  accepted  will,  probably,  be  gen- 
erally admitted.  When  we  are  told  that  under 
specified  conditions  objects  excite  certain  disturb- 
ances in  the  medium  between  them  and  our  eyes, 
and  that  our  eyes  are  affected  by  these  disturb- 
ances in  various  ways,  that  retina  and  nerve  are 
thereby  stimulated,  and  that  consequently  we  see, 
we  tend  to  believe  what  we  are  told.  When  we  are 
told  that  the  medium  is  the  ether,  we  may  have 
difficulty  in  comprehending  just  what  the  ether  is, 
but  we  tend  to  believe  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
or  something  like  it  which  we  might  understand 
better  with  increased  knowledge.  We  tend  to  be- 
lieve these  things  just  as  we  tend  to  believe  the 


148     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

historian  when  he  tells  us  that  the  Pilgrims  landed 
in  1620  A.  D.  Indeed,  we  naturally  regard  state- 
ments about  the  ether,  about  the  processes  and 
results  of  perception,  and  statements  about  the 
Pilgrims,  as  statements  of  the  same  general  kind 
purporting  to  inform  us  about  the  conditions  and 
happenings  in  the  world  in  which  we  live.  Simi- 
larly, we  incline  to  accept  the  statements  of  the 
sciences  for  just  what  they  purport  to  be:  that 
there  is  such  a  substance  as  oxygen  and  that  it 
combines  with  other  substances  in  certain  ways ; 
that  these  substances  may  be  atomic  in  structure 
or  of  a  structure  more  complex ;  that  living  beings 
vary  in  certain  ways  and  preserve  an  amount  of 
continuity  in  their  succession ;  that  the  natural  his- 
tory of  the  world  is,  in  large  measure,  a  genuine 
account  of  what  has  happened.  In  short,  what- 
ever knowledge  is  of  the  experimental  kind  we 
take  its  deliverances  as  probably  correct  informa- 
tion about  the  things  with  which  it  deals.  This 
habit  of  mind  is  by  no  means  incompatible  with 
the  liberal  recognition  that  we  know  but  little  and 
that  the  little  we  know  is  doubtless  subject  to  re- 
vision. But  we  naturally  hold  tenaciously  to  that 
little  until  the  need  of  revision  has  become  appar- 
ent. The  revised  knowledge  is,  however,  the  same 
in  kind  as  that  which  it  supersedes. 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  149 


II 

Wiether  we  regard  perception  as  a  process  or  as 
a  content,  concrete  bodies  of  knowledge  result  pur- 
porting to  give  us  approximately  correct  informa- 
tion about  the  world  in  which  we  live.  Yet  it  has 
been  repeatedly  insisted  that  just  because  these 
two  attitudes  towards  perception  exist  informa- 
tion about  our  world  cannot  ultimately  be  taken 
at  its  face  value  and  with  its  natural  import.  For, 
it  is  urged,  if  we  mean  by  perception  as  a  content 
that  which  we  immediately  perceive,  it  is  evident 
that,  in  the  last  analysis,  perception  is  given  to  us 
only  as  a  content.  We  may,  of  course,  still  speak 
of  examining  into  the  processes  of  perception  and 
even  of  experimenting  upon  them,  but  it  should  be 
evident  that  these  processes,  so  far  as  we  directly 
attack  them,  are  themselves  perceptions,  they  are 
what  we  immediately  perceive,  they  are  contents. 
How,  then,  can  we  be  justified  in  regarding  them 
as  the  real  processes  which  precede  contents  and 
result  in  perceptions  ?  On  the  other  hand,  if  we 
cut  the  contents  wholly  off  from  their  supposed 
processes,  how  can  we  be  justified  in  longer  be- 
lieving that  they,  with  the  bodies  of  knowledge 
built  directly  upon  them,  afford  us  reliable  infor- 
mation about  our  world  ?  Are  we  not  confronted 
here  with  the  problem  of  knowledge  in  its  most 
serious    and    fundamental   form,    and    confronted 


150     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

with  it  in  a  manner  requiring  a  procedure  and 
point  of  view  in  marked  contrast  with  the  pro- 
cedure and  points  of  view  which  have  given  us 
our  bodies  of  positive  knowledge?  Do  we  not 
need  a  theory  which  may  free  us  from  a  situa- 
tion which,  otherwise,  must  remain  ambiguous 
and  paradoxical?  We  have  in  these  questions 
one  way  of  stating  the  central  problem  of  modern 
epistemology. 

More  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  soundness 
of  the  solutions  which  have  been  offered  of  this 
problem  than  has  been  paid  to  their  success  in 
modifying  positive  knowledge  and  in  giving  us 
increased  reliable  information  about  our  world. 
If,  however,  we  do  not  raise  the  question  of  their 
validity,  but  ask  rather  concerning  their  impor- 
tance for  the  bodies  of  knowledge  which  are  steadily 
built  up  in  the  ways  indicated  in  the  early  para- 
graphs of  this  paper,  we  are  confronted  with  the 
fact  that  they  have  not  modified  these  bodies  of 
knowledge  in  any  essential  particular,  nor  sup- 
plemented them  in  any  continuous  and  homogene- 
ous manner.  Their  efficacy  has  exhibited  itself 
primarily  in  modifying  our  personal  estimate  of 
the  significance  of  what  we  know.  Some  illustra- 
tions of  this  result  may  reinforce  the  general 
statement. 

Professor  Karl  Pearson's  characterization  of 
the  concepts  of  science  as  conceptual  shorthand 
has,  as  is  evident  from  his  "  Grammar  of  Science," 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  151 

an  epistemological  basis.  There  may  be  no  atoms 
and  no  ether.  Indeed,  he  conceives  their  existence 
to  be  relatively  an  unimportant  matter.  The  im- 
portant matter  is  whether  they,  as  conceptual 
shorthand,  help  us  to  resume  the  routine  of  our 
perceptions.  But  it  is  clear,  none  the  less,  that 
scientists  attempt  to  discover  the  constitution  of 
the  ether,  the  weight  of  atoms,  their  structure,  and 
their  relations  to  one  another.  I  say  they  attempt 
to  discover  these  things,  they  do  not  attempt  simply 
to  conceive  them.  The  acceptance  or  rejection  of 
Professor  Pearson's  epistemologv'  does  not  appear 
to  affect  their  methods  of  research  or  the  formula- 
tion of  their  results.  He  may  lead  us  to  believe  that 
an  epistemological  estimate  of  the  value  of  science 
is  a  very  important  matter,  but  it  seems  to  be  im- 
portant not  because  it  makes  for  a  better  or  a  more 
accurate  science,  not  because  it  increases  our  suc- 
cess in  using  the  results  of  research  in  industry 
and  the  arts,  but  because  it  tends  to  modify  our 
personal  estimates  of  the  ultimate  significance  of 
knowledge.  The  "Grammar  of  Science"  con- 
tributes, undoubtedly,  to  the  methods  and  results 
of  science,  but  its  epistemology  contributes  not  to 
their  enlargement,  but  to  their  spiritual  evaluation. 
It  leads  us  to  reflect  on  the  importance  of  the 
proper  estimate  of  science  for  social  progress  and 
citizenship. 

As   a  second  illustration,   I   take   the  following 
paragraph  from  Professor  H.   Poincare's   "Value 


152     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

of  Science'*:  "Does  the  harmony  the  human 
inteUigence  thinks  it  discovers  in  nature  exist  out- 
side of  this  inteUigence  ?  No,  beyond  doubt,  a 
reahty  completely  independent  of  the  mind  which 
conceives  it,  sees  or  feels  it,  is  an  impossibility.  A 
world  as  exterior  as  that,  even  if  it  existed,  would 
for  us  be  forever  inaccessible.  But  what  we  call 
objective  reality  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  what  is 
common  to  many  thinking  beings,  and  could  be 
common  to  all;  this  common  part,  we  shall  see, 
can  only  be  the  harmony  expressed  by  mathematical 
laws.  It  is  this  harmony  then  which  is  the  sole 
objective  reality,  the  only  truth  we  can  attain; 
and  when  I  add  that  the  universal  harmony  of  the 
world  is  the  source  of  all  beauty,  it  will  be  under- 
stood what  price  we  should  attach  to  the  slow  and 
difficult  progress  which  little  by  little  enables  us 
to  know  it  better."  ^  Even  if  these  words  contain 
the  proper  estimate  of  the  value  of  science,  even  if 
it  is  true  that  the  only  genuine  objective  reality  is 
a  harmony  which  does  not  exist  outside  of  the  intel- 
ligence which  discovers  it  and  is  yet  common  to 
many  thinking  beings,  we  find  thereby  no  new 
ways  to  enlarge  or  correct  our  positive  knowledge 
about  the  world.  We  may  be  freed,  as  Professor 
Poincare  suggests,  from  a  certain  fear  of  scientific 
truth  which  might  otherwise  oppress  us.  We  may 
have  our  spiritual  vision  broadened.  But  the  prog- 
ress of  science  does  not  seem  to  be  affected  by  such 

^  Popular  Science  Monthly.  Vol.  LXIX,  p.  196. 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  153 

services  except  in  so  far  as  they  help  to  remove  our 
prejudices  or  make  us  enthusiastic. 

If  we  turn  to  the  writings  of  those  who  are  more 
exclusively  epistemologists,  the  same  general  con- 
clusions will  be  forced  upon  us.  How  repeatedly 
we  have  been  told  that  epistemology  does  not  dis- 
turb the  ordinary  processes  of  knowledge  !  How 
naturally  philosophers  have  been  led  to  commend 
it  for  its  effects  on  character  !  "  If,  therefore,"  says 
Berkeley,  "we  consider  the  difference  there  is  be- 
twixt natural  philosophers  and  other  men,  with 
regard  to  their  knowledge  of  the  phenomena,  we 
shall  find  it  consists,  not  in  an  exacter  knowledge 
of  the  efficient  cause  that  produces  them  —  for 
that  can  be  no  other  than  the  will  of  a  spirit  — 
but  only  in  a  greater  largeness  of  comprehension, 
whereby  analogies,  harmonies,  and  agreements 
are  discovered  in  the  works  of  nature,  and  the 
particular  effects  explained,  that  is,  reduced  to 
general  rules."  Again  he  says:  "From  what  has 
been  premised,  no  reason  can  be  drawn  why  the 
history  of  nature  should  not  still  be  studied,  and 
observations  and  experiments  made;  which,  that 
they  are  of  use  to  mankind,  and  enable  us  to  draw 
any  general  conclusions,  is  not  the  result  of  any 
immutable  habitudes  or  relations  between  things 
themselves,  but  only  of  God's  goodness  and  kind- 
ness to  men  in  the  administration  of  the  world."  ^ 
Illustrations   from    certain    contemporaneous   phi- 

^  "Works,"  Eraser's  edition,  1901,  Vol.  I,  pp.  315,  317. 


154     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

losophers  might  also  be  cited  to  indicate  that  in 
their  opinion  the  great  aim  of  philosophical  inquiry 
into  the  foundations  of  knowledge  is  not  to  rectify 
or  homogeneously  to  supplement  the  results  of 
positive  knowledge,  but  to  afford  us  a  spiritual 
estimate  of  these  results.  By  considering  episte- 
mological  speculations  we  are  led  to  reflect  on 
our  relations  to  the  absolute. 

Considerations  like  the  above  point  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  service  which  epistemology  renders 
is  not  logical,  but  moral  and  spiritual.  It  affords 
us,  to  use  the  expression  with  which  Professor 
Santayana  describes  religion,  "another  world  to 
live  in,"  a  world  where  it  may  indeed  be  good  to 
dwell  now  and  then,  but  which  is  so  different  and 
remote  from  the  world  where  perception  is  a  fact 
and  a  process  for  investigation  that  the  problem 
of  perception  receives  thereby  no  genuine  solution. 
In  terms  of  that  other  world  we  may  describe  per- 
ception in  ways  endeared  to  epistemology,  but 
when  we  seek  information  about  what  we  perceive 
and  how  we  perceive  it,  we  return  to  the  world  of 
positive  knowledge.  Should  we  ask  if  this  informa- 
tion is  correct,  we  should  find  no  answer  in  that 
other  world.  It  would  appear,  therefore,  that  the 
problem  of  the  relation  between  the  content  and 
the  process  of  perception  is  not  clarified  by  episte- 
mology. Possibly  it  is  a  problem  which  does  not 
involve  the  question  of  the  nature  and  validity  of 
knowledge  at  all,  for  it  may  well  be  that  the  rela- 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  155 

tion  between  content  and  process  is  not  a  cognitive 
relation. 

In  spite  of  what  appears  to  be  its  logical  irrele- 
vancy for  all  bodies  of  positive  knowledge,  episte- 
mology,  it  may  be  urged,  can  hardly  be  dismissed 
for  that  reason.  The  processes  of  knowledge, 
studied  as  empirically  and  experimentally  as  you 
please,  may  occasion  problems  the  solution  of 
which  may  force  us  to  recognize  that  there  is  a 
region  of  philosophical  truth  different  from  what 
positive  knowledge  reveals  and  beyond  it,  a  region 
that  forms  indeed  a  supplement  to  that  disclosed 
by  science,  but  a  supplement  to  be  reached  by 
other  methods.  That  other  world  to  live  in  may 
not  at  all  be  damaged  by  the  recognition  of  it  as 
another  world;  it  may,  rather,  thereby  receive 
added  importance.  If  we  are  actually  forced  by 
the  peculiarities  of  experience  to  frame  a  theory 
in  the  light  of  which  we  may  scrutinize  the  truth 
of  the  bodies  of  knowledge  we  build  up  directly 
from  the  facts  of  life,  we  ought,  no  doubt,  to  sub- 
mit to  such  pressure  and  do  the  best  we  can  in  the 
way  of  such  a  theory.  Furthermore,  it  may  appear 
arbitrary  and  high-handed  to  claim  that  episte- 
mology  itself  is  not  built  up  directly  from  the  facts 
of  life,  or  that  it  is  without  experimental  warrant. 
The  facts  of  experience  justify  it,  one  may  claim, 
and  make  it  necessary.  If  its  development  leads 
us  radically  to  revise  our  estimate  of  the  results  of 
positive  knowledge,  and  to  find  in  them  a  signif- 


156     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

icance  deeper  than  what  they  obviously  disclose, 
is  it  not  irrelevant  to  reply  that  epistemology  does 
not  alter  the  methods  of  positive  knowledge  or 
enlarge  the  content  of  history  and  the  sciences  in 
any  continuous  and  homogeneous  manner  ?  The 
realist  may  clamor  for  the  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  all  philosophy  can  do  is  to  tell  us  in  the  most 
comprehensive  way  what  we  have  found  our  world 
really  to  be,  but  the  idealist  can  always  retort  that 
he  has  found  our  world  to  be  precisely  that  which 
his  own  idealistic  epistemology  has  disclosed.  The 
clamor  and  retort  do  not,  however,  advance  our 
knowledge. 

Yet  I  believe  that  the  student  who  is  interested 
in  recording  the  results  of  modern  intellectual 
inquiry  is  warranted  in  upholding  the  conclusion 
on  which  this  paper  has,  thus  far,  insisted.  We 
build  up  directly  from  considering  the  processes 
of  perception,  and  also  the  results  of  those  processes, 
vast  bodies  of  knowledge  without  seeking  any 
epistemological  warrant  for  our  procedure.  We 
may  build  up  an  epistemology  also,  finding  our 
warrant  for  so  doing  in  matters  which  the  bodies 
of  knowledge  referred  to  designedly  and  systemati- 
cally neglect,  and  be  led  thereby  to  scrutinize  the 
truth  of  our  positive  knowledge  from  the  vantage 
ground  whither  epistemology  has  carried  us.  But 
if  we  ask  what  actual  service  this  scrutiny  performs, 
we  seem  compelled  to  answer  that  the  service  is 
not  logical,  but  moral  and  spiritual.     It  does  not 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  157 

modify  knowledge.  It  modifies  character.  It  does 
not  give  us  new  or  increased  information  about  our 
world  whereby  that  world  may  be  more  effectively 
controlled.  It  gives  us  rather  considerations  the 
contemplation  of  which  is  more  or  less  satisfying 
to  the  spirit. 

Ill 

Such  a  situation  is  provoking.  It  has  given  rise 
to  noteworthy  systems  of  metaphysics  which  may 
serve  to  explain  why  the  bodies  of  positive  knowl- 
edge and  epistemology  have  so  little  mutual  rele- 
vance, and  appear,  nevertheless,  to  be  natural  and 
inevitable  intellectual  products.  But  the  question 
I  would  raise  here  does  not  primarily  concern 
these  systems.  It  concerns  rather  the  initial  step 
which  carries  us  to  them.  I  should  like  to  ask 
whether,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  difficulties  to 
which  the  theory  of  perception  gives  rise  demand 
an  epistemological  solution.  In  other  words,  does 
the  fact  that  the  processes  of  perception  result  in 
contents  which  alone  we  can  be  said  to  perceive 
necessitate  the  question  of  the  validity  of  what  we 
know  ?  Can  the  problem  of  perception  be  intel- 
ligibly defined  as  a  problem  of  cognition  ?  It  has 
been  quite  generally  assumed  that  we  must  ulti- 
mately define  it  as  such  a  problem  even  if  by  so 
doing  we  become  uninteHigible,  concluding  that 
the  content  of  perception  is  subjective  because  it 
is  other  than  and  subsequent  to  an  objective  proc- 


158     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

ess  which  produces  it,  and  then  concluding  that 
we  must  question  or  reconstruct  the  objectivity  of 
the  process  because  the  only  means  by  which  we 
know  it  is  the  content.  It  is  that  assumption  which 
gives  point  to  the  question  whether  we  perceive 
things  as  they  really  are  and  which  makes  the 
claim  that  knowledge  should  be  taken  at  its  face 
value  as  a  natural  product  appear  so  violent  to 
many  minds.  Until  this  assumption  is  reckoned 
with  we  can  hope  for  little  clear  appreciation  of 
differences  of  opinion.  I  propose  a  general  exami- 
nation of  it  here  in  the  hope  that  I  may  at  least 
suggest  that  its  claims  are  far  from  final. 

"Fire  may  burn  our  bodies  with  no  other  effect 
than  it  does  a  billet,  unless  the  motion  be  continued 
to  the  brain,  and  there  the  sense  of  heat,  or  idea  of 
pain,  be  produced  in  the  mind;  wherein  consists 
actual  perception.'*  From  the  truth  of  this  state- 
ment few  would  naturally  dissent.  It  contains, 
however,  a  formulation  of  the  relation  between 
the  mechanism  and  the  result  of  perception  which 
is  ambiguously  sustained  by  the  facts.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  unless  the  motion  be  continued  to  the 
brain  we  do  not  perceive  the  burn.  But  it  is  not 
evident  in  the  same  way  that  the  sense  of  heat  or 
idea  of  pain  is  produced  there  in  the  mind  by  the 
continuation  of  that  motion.  As  has  been  repeat- 
edly maintained,  we  can  follow  that  continuation 
of  motion  pretty  far  and  the  farther  we  follow  it 
the  more  we  grow  convinced  that  we  should  not. 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  159 

could  we  follow  it  completely,  ever  come  upon 
the  sense  of  heat  or  the  idea  of  pain.  We  are 
reasonably  convinced  that  without  sense-organs, 
nerves,  and  brain,  we  should  never  perceive  the 
world  as  we  do  perceive  it,  but  the  more  completely 
we  understand  organs,  nerves,  and  brain,  the  less 
we  think  of  ever  discovering  in  them  that  world  of 
varied  objects  and  events.  Now  this  fact  has  led, 
as  it  led  with  Locke,  to  the  assumption  that,  there- 
fore, the  world  which  we  perceive  cannot  be  con- 
tinuous and  homogeneous  with  the  process  by 
which  we  perceive  it.  That  world  must  be  of  a 
nature  quite  different,  a  world  of  "ideas,"  of 
"states  of  consciousness,"  a  mental  world,  in  short, 
the  relation  of  which  to  the  world  in  which  the 
process  occurs  we  must  now  speculate  about  and 
construct  an  epistemology  to  explain. 

The  disparity,  however,  between  the  world  which 
we  perceive  and  the  world  where  the  processes  of 
perception  occur,  tends  to  vanish  on  close  examina- 
tion. When  once  perception  as  a  content  is  styled 
"idea,"  many  minds,  under  the  logical  restraint  of 
such  ambiguous  propositions  as  "  the  idea  of  weight 
is  not  heavy"  and  "the  idea  of  length  is  not  long," 
have  violently  robbed  "ideas"  of  the  qualities 
they  rightfully  possess.  What  we  perceive  may 
be  styled  "ideas,"  but  the  name  ought  not  to  ob- 
scure the  fact  that  some  of  these  "ideas"  are 
actually  red  and  green,  others  sweet  and  sour, 
others  noisy,  others  too  heavy  to  be  lifted,  others 


160     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

of  measurable  length.  Were  they  not  such,  it  is 
clear  we  should  never  speak  of  such  qualities  or 
seek  to  discover  their  causes.  Epistemologists 
have  struggled  over  the  question  of  the  relation 
of  mind  to  matter,  and  idealists  have  insisted 
that  matter  is,  after  all,  mental,  but  the  obvious 
fact  is  that  "states  of  consciousness"  when  made 
to  include  all  that  we  perceive,  do,  some  of  them 
at  least,  possess  the  qualities  which  have  been 
invariably  ascribed  to  matter.  Epistemology  has 
done  much  to  obscure  this  fundamental  fact. 
Berkeley  asks :  "  What  do  we  perceive  besides  our 
own  ideas  or  sensations  .'*  and  is  it  not  plainly  re- 
pugnant that  any  one  of  these,  or  any  combination 
of  them,  should  exist  unperceived .? "  ^  Clearly  it 
is  plainly  repugnant  and  a  manifest  contradiction 
to  suppose  that  perceptions  are  not  perceptions,  but 
is  matter  thereby  destroyed  ?  Is  not  what  we  per- 
ceive red  ?  Is  it  not  a  deafening  noise  ?  Of  those 
two  things  we  perceive  is  not  one  longer  than  the 
other  ?  Has  not  what  we  perceive  momentum 
and  weight  ?  Is  it  not,  then,  plainly  repugnant  to 
conclude  that  the  contents  of  the  mind  are,  all  of 
them,  immaterial  ? 

Even,  then,  if  we  assume  that  the  world  we  per- 
ceive is  not  continuous  with  the  process  by  which 
we  perceive  it,  it  is  a  world  not  so  very  unlike  the 
world  in  which  the  process  takes  place.  It  may 
be  made  only  of  the  stuff  of  consciousness,  but 

*  "  Works,"  Vol.  I,  p.  259. 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  161 

then  consciousness  is  the  kind  of  stuff  that  may  be 
condensed  into  a  lump  of  sugar  with  which  to 
sweeten  coffee.  Nor  can  we  hope  to  obscure  the 
fact  by  insisting  that  "states  of  consciousness'* 
are  at  best  "representations  "  of  other  things,  which 
other  things  have  the  quahties  in  question.  For, 
however  that  may  be,  the  "representations"  have 
also  the  same  qualities  and  obey  the  same  laws. 
The  world  which  we  perceive  turns  out  thus  to  be 
of  the  same  general  kind  as  the  world  in  which  the 
processes  of  perception  occur.  Even  if  the  two 
worlds  are  numerically  distinct,  they  are  essentially 
alike.  The  problem  of  their  relation  to  each  other 
is  not  a  problem  of  the  relation  between  two  natures 
radically  different  and  heterogeneous. 

From  these  considerations  certain  conclusions 
appear  to  me  to  be  obvious.  If  the  processes  of 
perception  about  which  physiology  and  psychol- 
ogy inform  us  are  the  processes  by  means  of  which 
we  perceive  our  world,  then,  if  the  perceived  world 
is  not  continuous  with  those  processes,  it  is  none  the 
less  homogeneous  with  the  world  where  they  occur, 
and  might  contain  them  if  they  are  ever  given  "in 
representation.'*  If  the  processes  belong  to  a  world 
entirely  physical,  the  "representations"  belong  to 
a  world  at  least  partly  physical.  In  other  words, 
if  there  is  a  physical  w^orld  external  to  consciousness, 
there  is  also  a  physical  world  within  consciousness. 
The  physical  things  we  perceive  may  not  be  the 
physical  things  which  cause  our  perceptions,  they 

11 


162     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

may  be  only  representations  or  reduplications  of 
them,  but  they  are  physical  things  none  the  less. 
There  has  never  been  discovered  in  "conscious- 
ness** any  activity  or  power  by  virtue  of  which  a 
physical  thing  even  if  reduplicated  must  lose  its 
physical  character  or  the  general  homogeneity  of 
the  world  be  disrupted.  If,  however,  the  proc- 
esses about  which  physiology  and  psychology  in- 
form us  are  not  the  processes  by  which  we  perceive 
our  world,  the  question  of  reduplication  and  rep- 
resentation is  meaningless.  We  need  no  longer 
be  perplexed  over  the  problem  of  the  homogeneity 
and  continuity  of  the  perceived  world  with  the 
processes  which  give  rise  to  it,  for  the  problem 
then  no  longer  exists. 

The  conclusions  stated  in  the  preceding  para- 
graph cannot,  however,  fail  to  modify  our  attitude 
towards  the  problem  of  such  continuity.  To  sup- 
pose that  physiology  and  psychology  give  us  no 
reliable  information  is  preposterous.  Yet  the  fact 
remains  that  the  perceived  world  cannot  be  located 
at  any  point  in  the  perceptive  process  forming 
therewith  a  continuous  series  of  events.  Must  we 
therefore  conclude  that  there  are  two  worlds,  one 
representing  the  other,  both  essentially  homogen- 
eous, and  yet  presenting  a  problem  of  continuity 
and  relationship  which  we  can  never  bring  within 
the  domain  of  positive  knowledge,  but  of  which 
we  must  always  give  only  a  speculative  solution  ? 
This  conclusion  has  become  less  easy  with  the  rec- 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  163 

ognition  that  the  perceived  world  is  essentially  like 
the  world  of  processes,  is  the  kind  of  a  world  which 
might  contain  them  and  does  contain  them  contin- 
uous with  the  rest  of  itself  if  the  processes  are  ever 
given  in  representation.  A  world,  a  representative 
world,  which  can  thus  so  faithfully  copy,  even  in 
part,  another  world  which  is  somehow  its  cause, 
would  appear  to  contain  within  itself  all  the  ele- 
ments necessary  to  show  how  process  and  result 
are  related  to  each  other,  at  least  ''in  representa- 
tion." And  if  "in  representation,"  then  surely 
the  need  of  duplicated  worlds  has  disappeared  so 
far  as  any  positive  result  for  knowledge  is  con- 
cerned, for  process  and  result  would,  in  that  event, 
be  given  in  a  manner  wherein  their  relation  to  each 
other  could  be  defined.  It  would  appear  artificial 
and  strained,  therefore,  if  we  were  to  continue  to 
suppose  that  the  problem  of  the  relation  between 
process  and  result  is  ultimately  of  an  epistemologi- 
cal  character.  It  appears  rather  as  a  problem  of 
reorganization  and  rearrangement,  of  new  relations 
in  one  continuous  world,  not  the  problem  of  the 
reduplication  of  a  world  forever  excluded  from 
the  place  where  it  is  known. 

In  general,  then,  the  problem  of  the  continuity 
and  homogeneity  of  the  perceived  world  with  the 
processes  which  give  rise  to  it  appears  to  be  a  prob- 
lem lying  wholly  within  the  domain  of  positive 
knowledge.  We  may  proceed  to  solve  it  without 
first  securing  epistemological  warrant  for  so  doing. 


164     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

If  we  fail,  the  reason  can  hardly  be  that  we  lack 
the  proper  epistemology  from  the  vantage  ground 
of  which  our  procedure  may  be  philosophically 
scrutinized  and  corrected.  For,  again,  the  proc- 
esses of  perception  are  such  as  we  discover  them 
to  be,  or  they  are  not.  If  they  are  not,  there  is  no 
problem  of  continuity  and  homogeneity.  If  they 
are,  that  problem,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  does 
not  involve  the  question  of  the  validity  of  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  processes  or  of  the  world  resulting 
from  them,  but  only  the  question  of  the  sort  of  con- 
nection which  exists  between  the  processes  and  the 
resulting  world.  That  connection  is  not  cognitive, 
because  the  results  of  perception  are  not  the 
knowledge  of  its  processes ;  the  thing  seen  is  not 
the  knowledge  of  the  mechanism  of  vision. 

The  same  result  might  be  reached  by  consider- 
ing the  problem  of  perception  directly  and  in  de- 
tail. There  are  many  cases  in  which  we  make  a 
distinction  between  what  we  perceive  and  what 
really  exists,  cases,  that  is,  where  we  seem  forced  to 
distinguish  between  appearance  and  reality,  and 
ask  whether  we  perceive  reality  as  it  is.  Every  one 
is  familiar  with  such  cases.  Who  sees  reality  cor- 
rectly, the  color-blind  observer  or  the  one  not 
color-blind  ?  Now  it  is  interesting  to  observe 
that  when  we  attempt  to  answer  such  a  question 
we  really  restate  it  so  that  it  loses  all  its  epistemo- 
logical  character.  For  what  we  seek  to  discover  is 
not  whether  the  color-blind  see  reality  as  it  is,  but 


F.  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE  165 

why  they  make  the  color  discriminations  they 
do.  If  we  succeed  in  our  discovery,  we  have 
learned  that  reality  is  so  constituted  that,  given 
certain  conditions,  certain  results  are  the  outcome. 
We  need  no  epistemology  to  estimate  the  truth  of 
our  discovery.  Again :  we  perceive  the  stroke  of  the 
distant  woodsman's  axe  and  its  sound  in  succes- 
sion. How,  then,  can  we  be  said  to  perceive  reahty 
correctly,  since  stroke  and  sound  are  in  reality 
simultaneous  ?  But  the  diflSculty  thus  presented 
is  gratuitous.  For  most  assuredly  did  we  perceive 
stroke  and  sound  simultaneously,  the  constitution 
of  things  would  have  to  be  different  from  what  we 
have  discovered  it  to  be;  light  and  sound  would 
then  travel  at  the  same  rate.  The  so-called  spatial 
and  temporal  discrepancies  in  perception  turn  out 
on  examination  to  be,  not  matters  of  cognitive  im- 
portance putting  the  validity  of  perception  in  peril, 
but  definite  and  ascertainable  factors  in  the  consti- 
tution of  the  world. 

The  question,  whether  we  perceive  the  world  as 
it  really  is,  turns  out  thus  to  be  an  ambiguous  ques- 
tion. If  it  means,  is  a  perceived  world  the  same  as 
an  unperceived  world,  the  answer  is,  naturally,  in 
the  negative.  If  it  means,  have  we  discovered  how 
we  perceive  the  world,  our  answer  will  disclose 
whether  we  have  or  not.  But  if  it  is  claimed  that 
from  the  nature  of  the  case  we  can  never  tell 
whether  the  discovery  has  been  made,  it  is  quite 
idle  to  speculate  about  the  matter.     It  would  ap- 


166     PERCEPTION  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY 

pear,  therefore,  that  whatever  problems  a  theory 
of  perception  may  involve,  they  are  not  problems 
of  epistemology,  but  of  natural  science  and  posi- 
tive knowledge.  No  matter  what  diflSculties  these 
problems  present,  they  furnish  no  warrant  for 
the  assumption  that  they  necessitate  an  epistemol- 
ogy which  shall  estimate  the  truth  of  those  bodies 
of  knowledge  we  build  up  directly  from  consid- 
ering how  we  perceive  and  what  we  perceive.  They 
necessitate  only  problems  of  definition  and  positive 
relationship.  In  the  words  of  Jevons :  **  We  can- 
not suppose,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose, 
that  by  the  constitution  of  the  mind  we  are  obliged 
to  think  of  things  differently  from  the  manner  in 
which  they  are."  ^ 

^  "Lessons  in  Logic,"  p.  11. 


SUBSTITUTIONALISM 


SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

By  C.  a.  SxRONa 

1  O  provide  the  metaphysical  background  neces- 
sary for  a  full  comprehension  of  my  theory,  I  must 
ask  the  reader  to  make  with  me  a  certain  assump- 
tion. This  is  that  our  perceptive  experiences  are 
not  in  the  order  which  they  reveal,  or  rather  not  in 
the  part  or  place  of  that  order  which  they  reveal, 
but  in  a  place  represented  by  that  of  the  brain- 
events  with  which  they  are  (as  we  say)  correlated. 
The  experiences,  in  other  words,  are  the  brain- 
events,  considered  in  themselves ;  and  all  other 
physical  events,  in  themselves,  are  what  may  be 
called  infra- experiences — something  of  like  nature 
with  human  experiences,  only  far  less  highly  or- 
ganized. This  is  in  truth  as  reasonable  an 
hypothesis  as  that  the  experiences  are  themselves 
in  the  physical  (or  rather  the  extra- bodily  physi- 
cal) relations ;  that  is,  it  puts  them  in  the  same 
world  with  the  object,  only  in  a  different  place  — 
in  the  brain,  instead  of  in  the  object  perceived. 
The  chief  advantage  of  the  conception  lies,  to  my 
mind,  in  permitting  a  better  explanation  of  the 
relation  of  mind  and   body  than  would  be   pos- 

169 


170  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

sible  on  the  alternative  theory.  In  any  case  I  ask 
the  reader  to  entertain  it,  and  to  note  the  con- 
sequences that  follow  in  regard  to  the  nature 
of  cognition. 

By  cognition,  here,  I  mean  mere  apprehension  of 
or  acquaintance  with  an  object,  whetlier  it  be  a 
physical  fact  or  a  mental  state,  a  memory  or  a 
feeling  in  another  mind  —  not  that  placing  and 
classification  of  objects  thus  cognized  which  takes 
place  by  connecting  them  in  thought  with  other 
objects  similarly  apprehended. 

The  essential  thesis  of  this  paper  is  a  proposition 
in  regard  to  the  mechanism  of  cognition  as  thus 
defined:  that  it  happens  by  the  projection  of  a 
sentient  experience  into  the  place  of  the  object 
cognized,  and  is  not  a  species  of  intuition  (either 
in  the  sense  of  involving  an  immediate  unity  of 
cognition  and  object,  or  in  the  sense  of  appre- 
hension of  the  latter  by  a  qualityless  conscious- 
ness). By  projection  I  mean  that  the  experience 
evokes  actions  (and  thoughts,  which  are  a  sort 
of  actions)  appropriate  to  the  object  and  not  to 
itself  as  an  experience. 

Thus  in  memory  (if  I  may  assume  that  memory 
is  the  cognition  of  an  earlier  experience,  and  not 
simply  the  repetition  in  fainter  form  of  a  percep- 
tion) we  have  a  past  experience  which  is  the  object 
and  a  present  experience  which  is  the  medium  of 
knowledge,  knower,  or  subject.  The  present  ex- 
perience does  not  intuite  the  past  experience   (in 


C.  A.   STRONG  171 

either  of  the  above  senses :  either  as  identical  with 
it  —  the  past  experience  come  to  Hfe  again  —  or 
as  affording  immediate  and,  so  to  speak,  achro- 
matic vision  of  it).  It  is  a  more  or  less  perfect  re- 
production of  it,  and  it  provokes  us  to  act  as  if 
what  we  had  to  do  with  were  the  object  and  not 
itself  as  a  present  state.  In  other  words,  it  earns 
its  title  to  be  a  memory  by  serving  as  a  satisfac- 
tory substitute  for  the  object  in  the  regulation  of 
conduct.  We  may  call  this  the  substitutional  theory 
of  knowledge,  or,  more  briefly,  substitutionalism. 

Substitutionalism  must  not  be  confused  with 
what  has  been  called  the  representative  theory  of 
knowledge.  This  theory  supposes  that  what  we 
have  immediately  to  do  with  or  cognize  is  the 
present  revived  experience,  and  that  from  this  we 
pass  to  the  object,  the  earlier  experience,  by  in- 
ference. But,  in  the  first  place,  there  is  no  "we," 
distinct  from  the  present  experience,  to  cognize  it, 
the  notion  of  a  qualityless  consciousness  being  a 
superstition;  but  what  we  mean  by  "we,"  or  the 
subject  in  this  case,  is  precisely  the  present  ex- 
perience. And,  in  the  second  place,  this  experi- 
ence does  not  in  any  way  cognize  or  apprehend 
itself.  What  it  cognizes  or  apprehends  is  the  past 
experience  or  object,  in  that  it  reproduces  it  and 
will  shortly  elicit  reactions  appropriate  to  it.  There 
being  no  other  thing  cognized  in  the  premises,  no 
middle  fact  or  representative  between  subject  and 
object,  the  cognizing  must  be  allowed  to  be  direct. 


172  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

So  that,  on  our  theory,  the  object  is  at  once  inde- 
pendently real  and  directly  known. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  not  immediately  {i.  e., 
without  medium)  but  substitutionally  known  — 
known  by  the  projection  of  a  present  experience, 
as  truly  possessed  of  definite  qualities  as  the  past 
experience  it  knows.  The  genuineness  of  the 
knowing  will  consequently  depend  on  two  things : 
(1)  on  the  knowing  experience  reproducing  the 
qualities  of  the  experience  known  with  sufficient 
accuracy;  (2)  on  its  eliciting  reactions  really 
appropriate  to  the  latter.  Now,  since  the  function 
of  cognition  exists  primarily  and  originally  for 
practical  ends,  what  is  sufficient  accuracy  will  be 
determined  mainly  by  the  eliciting  of  the  right 
reactions ;  whence  it  follows  that,  in  a  given  case, 
the  knowing  experience  may  vary  markedly  from 
its  prototype  in  richness  of  detail,  in  the  cast  of  its 
qualities,  and  even  in  more  fundamental  ways, 
without  forfeiting  its  pretension  to  be  a  memory 
so  long  as  only  it  calls  forth  the  right  reactions. 
Hence  we  must  distinguish  that  projection  of  the 
present  experience  which  constitutes  the  past  ex- 
perience as  remembered  from  the  past  experience 
as  it  really  was.  The  latter  alone  is  the  object  of 
knowledge ;  we  shall  be  following  accepted  usage 
if  we  call  the  former  its  content.  I  need  not  say 
that  this  distinction  is  of  capital  importance  —  in 
no  way  inferior  in  importance  to  that  so  much 
insisted  on  between  content  and  subject. 


C.  A.   STRONG  173 

We  are  now  in  possession  of  the  three  funda- 
mental epistemological  categories,  which  are 
SUBJECT,  CONTENT,  and  OBJECT.  I  shall  tr}'  to 
establish  that  this  account  of  cognition,  with  the 
distinction  of  these  three  categories,  applies  not 
only  to  memory,  but  also  to  perception,  and 
even  to  internal  observation  or  introspection. 

We  are  apt  to  suppose  the  case  of  perception 
essentially  different  from  that  of  memory  —  to 
conceive  that  it  involves  actual  experience  of  a 
present  object  whereas  memor}^  only  involves 
representation  of  an  absent  one.  This  is  because 
we  erroneously  identify  the  object  with  the  sen- 
sible appearance,  or  projected  visual  experience. 
A  moment's  thought  exposes  this  fallacy.  If  the 
visual  experience,  either  in  itself  or  projectively, 
were  identical  with  the  object,  the  connected  tactile 
experience,  being  something  totally  different,  would 
be  a  second  object;  yet  we  feel  that  touch  and 
vision  have  to  do  with  the  same  thing.  A  blind 
man  may  as  truly  cognize  a  sphere  by  handhng  it 
as  a  normal  man  by  seeing  it,  may  he  not  ?  Then 
the  sphere  itself  cannot  be  essentially  either  visual 
or  tactile. 

But  the  demonstrative  proof  that  the  object  is 
other  than  the  sensible  appearance  is  what  may 
be  called  the  lateness  of  perception.  The  sensible 
appearance  is  necessarily  synchronous  with  the 
perceptive  state ;    whereas   the  object    {i.  e.,   that 


174  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

phase  of  it  which  is  perceived)  belongs  to  an  earher 
moment.  Thus  a  star  which  we  see  in  the  sky 
may  have  ceased  to  exist  ages  ago:  a  sufficient 
proof,  surely,  that  what  we  now  see  (I  mean  the 
visual  phenomenon  —  not  that  which  the  visual 
phenomenon  reveals)  is  not  the  object  itself.  We 
are  habituated  to  the  notion  that  a  sound,  for  in- 
stance that  of  a  distant  whistle,  is  heard  at  a  later 
moment  than  that  at  which  its  objective  cause 
occurs  —  indeed,  we  see  the  escape  of  steam  sev- 
eral instants  before  we  hear  the  sound :  we  should 
apply  the  same  analogy  to  vision.  In  both  cases 
the  perceptive  experience  arises  only  after  the 
light-rays  and  sound-waves  have  reached  the  body. 
Hence  the  projected  perceptive  experience  cannot 
be  the  object  itself,  but  at  most  the  object  as  per- 
ceived; it  cannot  be  the  object  sensu  stricto  but 
only  the  content. 

Perhaps  the  reader  may  doubt  whether  there  is 
any  object  distinct  from  the  perceptive  experience 
as  projected;  the  assumption  of  one  may  seem  to 
him  to  involve  dualism  and  an  outsoaring  of  ex- 
perience not  permissible  to  an  empiricist,  or  indeed 
to  any  other  man.  At  least  in  the  case  of  memory 
he  will  admit  that  we  unhesitatingly  outsoar  both 
the  present  experience  and  its  content,  and  assume 
an  object  independently  real.  But  that  object, 
you  may  reply,  is  only  another  experience.  The 
answer  suggests  how  the  difficulty  about  dualism 
might  be  met  in  the  case  of  perception:    namely. 


C.   A.   STRONG  175 

provided  the  object  could  be  conceived  as  "only 
another  experience "  —  as  an  outlying  part  of 
the  world  of  sentiency,  fundamentally  of  like 
nature  with  the  sentient  experience  that  knows  it. 

In  contemporary  philosophical  controversy  we 
may  distinguish  the  following  three  groups :  the 
realists  proper,  maintaining  that  knowledge  reveals 
an  object  independently  existent;  the  transcen- 
dental idealists,  holding  that  it  discloses  a  content 
eternally  valid ;  and  the  immediate  empiricists 
(or  pragmatists  in  metaphysics),  who  teach  that  it 
has  no  reference  beyond  experience  but  is  con- 
cerned with  the  evoking  of  beneficial  reactions/ 
It  may  be  interesting  to  note  how  these  various 
contentions  appear  upon  the  substitutional  theory. 

The  case  of  memory  surely  bears  out  the  con- 
tention of  the  realists,  that  the  object  has  existence 
independently  of  the  knowing  state  and  is  in  no 
way  constituted  by  its  being  known.  And  we  have 
seen  that  the  same  thesis  may  be  defended  with 
reference  to  perception.  It  is  only  the  object  as 
remembered  or  perceived,  the  content,  that  is  con- 
stituted by  the  knowing,  and  we  may  suspect  that 
the  transcendental  idealists  have  mistaken  this  for 
the  object  itself.    If,  finally,  the  object  in  perception 

'  I  omit  the  subjectivists  from  this  list  because  they  play  at  present  too 
effaced  a  role  in  philosophical  controversy.  Subjectivism  is  the  man  of  straw 
that  every  novice  may  spurn  at,  even  though  he  have  failed  to  assimilate  the 
important  insight  it  embodies. 


176  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

can  be  shown  to  be  a  non- human  experience  exist- 
ing at  a  moment  shghtly  earher  than  that  at  which 
we  substitutionally  perceive  it,  the  view  of  the 
immediate  empiricists  that  there  is  no  object  inde- 
pendent of  experience  will  only  bear  the  construc- 
tion in  which  experience  means  all  experience,  not 
that  in  which  it  means  the  particular  experience 
engaged  in  knowing.  On  the  other  hand  we  may 
concede  to  them  that  knowledge  has  no  reference 
beyond  experience  in  this  sense,  that  there  is  noth- 
ing in  the  knowing  experience  itself  at  the  moment 
to  indicate  that  it  is  cognitive  or  self-transcendent, 
and  that  its  being  so  comes  to  light  empirically  only 
in  the  subsequent  fact  that  it  elicits  actions  appro- 
priate to  an  object  beyond  it  and  not  to  itself. 

What  the  transcendental  idealists  call  the  object 
is,  we  saw,  really  the  content.  Now  to  the  con- 
tent esse  =  percipi  applies :  it  exists  (or,  more  accu- 
rately, appears)  only  so  long  as  the  perceptive 
experience  continues.  So  that  regarding  the  fact 
of  non-continuance  the  transcendental  idealists  — 
and  the  Berkeleians  too,  though  what  they  refer 
to  is  perhaps  rather  the  perceptive  experience  — 
are  right,  and  wrong  only  in  supposing  what 
they  are  speaking  of  to  be  the  object.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  the  substitutional  theory  be  cor- 
rect, the  naive  realists  are  in  error  when  they 
suppose  that  we  perceive  the  object  immediately 
(without  medium)  and  as  it  is  in  itself.  This  con- 
ception shows  that  what  they  also,  like  the  tran- 


C.  A.   STRONG  177 

scendental  idealists  and  the  immediate  empiricists, 
have  in  mind  when  they  speak  of  the  object  is  the 
sensible  appearance  or  content.^  Now,  if  content 
and  object  agreed  in  every  respect,  both  as  to 
qualities  and  as  to  relations,  knowledge  would  be 
as  true,  or,  more  exactly,  as  adequate,  as  if  it  were 
immediate;  though  even  then  it  would  not  be  so. 
But  to  take  for  granted  that,  despite  their  exis- 
tential distinctness,  they  do  in  fact  thus  agree  is 
to  overlook  the  large  element  of  misrepresentation 
and  mere  symbolism  that  is  consistent  with  the 
eliciting  of  the  right  reactions.  Naive  reahsm  is 
indeed  the  essence  of  theoreticalism  or  what  Kant 
called  dogmatism. 

To  sum  up:  the  naive  realists  are  the  special 
champions  of  the  object  —  but  they  exaggerate  the 
directness  and  adequacy  of  our  knowledge  of  it; 
the  transcendental  ideaHsts  are  the  protagonists  of 
the  content  —  but  they  mistake  it  for  the  object, 
and  so  are  betrayed  into  declaring  the  latter  a 
thing  discontinuous  and  relative  to  the  mind ;  the 
immediate  empiricists  espouse  the  cause  of  (what 
they  call)  experience^  —  but  they  overlook  the  fact 
that  experiences  are  cognitive  when  they  lead  to 
certain  reactions  precisely  because  those  reactions 
are  adjusted  to  independent  objects. 

*  Unless  it  be  simply  the  perceptive  experience. 

*  What  they  call  experience  —  for  it  will  be  found  on  examination  that 
this  is  really  content,  or  at  least  a  fusion  of  content  with  experience  in  which 
the  latter  loses  its  purely  sentient  character  and  the  fonner  illegitimately 
gains  existence. 

12 


178  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

Let  us  next  consider  what  these  theories  have 
to  say  about  the  knowledge  of  consciousness  (or 
introspection  so  far  as  not  apperceptive). 

The  naive  reahsts,  since  they  mistake  the  sensi- 
ble appearance  for  the  object  and  hold  the  latter 
to  be  physical  and  not  in  any  sense  psychical, 
must  perforce  assume  a  qualityless,  "transparent" 
(I  quote  from  one  of  them)  consciousness  as  that 
which  perceives  it ;  a  consciousness  whose  existence 
is  distinctly  additional  to  that  of  the  object.  But 
since  at  the  moment  this  consciousness  is  wholly 
engrossed  with  the  cognition  of  the  object  and 
unaware  of  itself,  and  at  the  next  moment  it  is  gone, 
the  assertion  of  it  seems  to  rest  upon  no  empirical 
basis  —  as  the  word  " transparent"  admits.  Other 
naive  realists  seek  to  define  consciousness  as  a 
peculiar  kind  of  relation  between  objects,  which 
objects  can  be  in  and  yet  get  out  of  without  for- 
feiting their  existence:  but,  so  far  as  the  relation 
is  additional  to  the  things  related,  the  preceding 
argument  holds.  Still  others  (now  of  the  immedi- 
ate empiricist  type)  regard  the  object  as  in  another 
aspect  psychical,  and  tell  us  that  the  perception  is 
"in  the  object";  but  since  the  latter,  as  we  have 
seen,  belongs  to  an  earlier  moment  than  the  brain- 
state  which  corresponds  to  it,  this  amounts  to  the 
paradox  that  the  perception  of  a  star,  for  instance, 
happened  years  ago  and  not  at  the  moment  when 
as  a  matter  of  fact  we  perceive  it;  or  else  to  the 
supersubtle  doctrine  that  perception  is  never  per- 


C.  A.   STRONG  179 

ception  proper  but  always  memory  of  a  perception 
not  ours.  In  short,  the  sensible  appearance  having 
been  transferred  to  the  place  of  the  object,  nothing 
verifiable  remains  on  this  side  to  figure  as  the 
perception  of  it.  Emotions,  pleasures  and  pains, 
desires,  thoughts  are  obvious  and  discoverable 
states :  perceptions  are  sought  for  in  vain,  or  else 
relegated  to  the  world  beyond  the  mind.  All  this 
time  psychology  goes  on  assuming  that  colors 
and  shapes  in  their  immediacy  are  what  we  mean 
by  perceptions.  Evidently  the  excellence  of  the 
naive  realist's  knowledge  of  the  object  has  cost 
him  a  subject. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  as  the  substitutionalist 
maintains,  that  which  plays  the  role  of  subject  or 
consciousness  is  an  experience  projected,  and  the 
projection  is  due  to  subsequent  reactions  making 
the  experience  virtually  the  object,  that  is,  a  cogni- 
tive substitute  for  it,  then  the  moment  we  abandon 
the  objectifying  attitude  involved  in  these  reactions 
the  experience  (or  a  replica  of  it)  stands  before 
us  in  its  immediacy  as  that  which  a  moment  ago 
was  the  subject  or  knower;  knower  not  by  force 
of  anything  intrinsic,  but  simply  in  virtue  of  its 
external  relations  and  of  the  role  which  it  played 
as  a  medium  of  adjustment  to  the  object.  The 
knower  could  never  be  known  if  it  were  not  at  the 
moment  (I  must  not  say  experiencecZ,  but)  experi- 
ence —  an  experience  that  can  be  recalled  a  moment 
after  and  then  viewed  in  a  different  set  of  relations. 


180  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

The  transcendental  idealist,  next,  since  he  iden- 
tifies the  object  with  the  content  and  has  nothing 
beside,  and  since  content  is  a  thing  subjective  in 
its  material  and  objective  in  its  reference,  will 
declare  object  and  subject  to  be  aspects  of  a  single 
fact.  And  this  single  fact  he  will  doubtless  (since 
he  has  nothing  else)  call  by  the  name  of  "experi- 
ence." An  experience  thus,  in  the  case  of  memory, 
means  for  the  consistent  trans cenden talis t  not  the 
past  state  remembered  nor  the  present  state  that 
remembers  it,  but  the  past  state  as  it  appears  to  the 
present  state ;  in  short,  an  appearance  or  phenome- 
non. And  the  trans cendentalist  will  stoutly  protest 
that  there  is  no  subject  to  which  "experience"  is 
given  (the  subject,  according  to  him,  being  merely 
the  abstract  /  think  which  is  another  aspect  of  any 
content),  the  necessity  of  a  knowing  experience 
distinct  from  the  content  being  thus  confused 
with  the  necessity  of  a  qualityless  consciousness 
distinct  from  experience ;  while  his  opponent,  who 
agrees  with  him  in  defining  experience  as  the  unity 
of  subject  and  object  (i.  e.,  in  applying  the  term  to 
the  content),  will  as  stoutly  insist  that,  since  con- 
tents are  inactive  things,  they  must  be  given  to  a 
subject  or  "activity"  that  is  not  empirical  at  all. 
From  this  maze  of  misconceptions  and  mutual 
misunderstandings  the  substitutionalist  is  saved  by 
his  insight  that  the  proper  thing  to  be  called  ex- 
perience is  not  an  experience  projected  into  the  place 
of  another  experience  but  an  experience  simply. 


C.   A.   STRONG  181 

But  what  is  the  proper  thing  to  be  called  con- 
sciousness ?  Consciousness,  we  have  seen,  may 
mean  sentient  experience  so  far  as  exercising  tlie 
function  of  knowing,  and  this  is  the  sense  in  which 
the  word  is  commonly  used  by  psychologists ;  but 
it  might  also  conceivably  be  used,  and  is  indeed 
currently  by  philosophers,  for  the  mere  function  of 
knowing  considered  apart  from  the  existence  tliat 
exercises  it.  This  is  the  distinction  between  "  con- 
sciousness as  an  existence  "  and  "  consciousness  as 
a  knowing."  Content  is  the  inner  aspect  of  some- 
thing which  in  its  outer  aspect  is  a  functional 
relation  between  two  existences :  the  latter  is  con- 
sciousness as  a  knowing.  There  is  indeed  such 
a  distinction  of  aspects,  and  consciousness  as  a 
knowing  is  a  perfectly  real  thing  (though  it  might 
better  be  called  simply  cognition) ;  the  error  lies 
in  denying  that  consciousness  as  a  knowing  is  the 
function  of  an  existence,  or  in  conceiving  that  the 
existence  of  consciousness,  in  any  sense  in  which 
psychologists  have  a  right  to  speak  of  it,  is  simply 
the  existence  of  consciousness  as  a  knowing  (which 
a  little  reflection  would  show  to  be  not  an  exist- 
ence at  all). 

This  distinction  is,  I  think,  the  key  to  the  inter- 
minable dispute  over  the  efficacy  of  consciousness. 
Those  who  deny  efficacy  do  so  because  they  are 
thinking  of  consciousness  as  a  knowing,  or  tlie  ex- 
ternal aspect  of  content:  which  is  indeed  inactive, 
because  not  an  existence.    Those  who  assert  it  are 


182  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

thinking  of  consciousness  as  an  existence,  and  sub- 
stitutionalism  is  proof  that  this  may  be  con- 
ceived as  of  the  nature  of  experience  or  psychical. 

But  let  us  come  to  the  immediate  empiricists. 
Since  they  wholly  reject  an  object  distinct  from  the 
present  experience,  considering  that  the  existence 
of  experience  is  simply  the  givenness  of  objects,  their 
cue  must  be  to  deny  the  existence  of  consciousness 
as  a  thing  true  at  the  moment  and  explain  the  con- 
ception of  it  as  arising  through  the  subsequent 
overhauling  and  rethinking  of  experience.  They 
will  therefore  protest  against  the  notion  that  expe- 
rience is  inherently  psychical.  Experiences,  they 
will  tell  us,  are  originally  objective.  They  become 
subjective  or  psychical  only  when,  viewing  them  in 
retrospect,  we  take  them  in  a  connection  in  which 
they  did  not  originally  present  themselves.  To 
suppose  them  originally  psychical,  to  seek  to  build 
up  the  world  out  of  experiences  taken  as  psychical, 
is  psychologism,  a  condemnable  theory. 

Now,  when  the  substitutionalist  speaks  of  ex- 
periences as  sentient  or  psychical,  he  does  not  of 
course  mean  that  they  are  inherently  cognitive  or 
subjective.  Experiences,  we  have  seen,  are  cog- 
nitive only  in  virtue  of  an  external  relation.  He 
means  that  they  form  the  substance  of  the  know- 
ing mind,  and  that  perceptive  experiences,  for  in- 
stance, exist  in  exactly  the  same  way,  and  for  the 
same  brief  space  of  time,  as  emotional  experiences 
or  experiences  of  pleasure  and  pain.     Moreover, 


C.   A.   STRONG  183 

though  the  recognition  of  the  cognitive  function  of 
experiences  can  only  be  subsequent  and  retrospec- 
tive, yet  what  is  recognized  is  something  true  of  the 
earher  moment :  the  experiences  did  actually  stand 
in  these  external  relations,  and  they  were  therefore 
originally  cognitive  or  subjective  although  not  in- 
herently so.  The  cognitive  or  subjective  charac- 
ter is  not  conferred  by  the  later  retrospective  act 
—  experiences  do  not  become  subjective,  as  the 
immediate  empiricist  with  a  mistaken  idealism 
suggests.  But  this  means  that  they  were,  orig- 
inally, entitled  to  be  called  consciousness,  in  so  far 
as  the  exercising  of  the  cognitive  function  entitles 
anything  to  be  called  consciousness.  The  exist- 
ence of  consciousness,  in  other  words,  should  not 
be  denied  but  its  proper  identity  made  clear. 

Strictly  speaking,  neither  human  experience  qud 
exercising  the  function  of  knowing  nor  human 
experience  qud  sentient  existence  is  entitled  to  be 
called  consciousness.  By  its  derivation — con-sciotis- 
ness  —  the  word  signifies  the  knowing  of  objects 
together  with  awareness  of  the  subject.  It  refers 
to  that  common  experience  in  which,  when  ab- 
sorbed in  the  contemplation  of  objects,  we  suddenly 
awake  to  the  consciousness  of  ourselves  as  contem- 
plating them.  Not  the  self  or  subject  that  con- 
templates, but  self-awareness,  is  what  consciousness 
properly  means.  It  has,  however,  been  trans- 
ferred by  metonymy  to  the  object  of  such  aware- 
ness, the  self  or  subject,  and  is  constantly  used  in 


184  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

that  sense  by  psychologists.  Finally,  philosophers 
have  seized  upon  the  word  and  applied  it  to  the 
mere  function  of  knowing,  in  so  far  as  knowing 
appears  to  present  its  object  with  a  contemplative 
directness. 

We  may  sum  up  these  results  by  indicating  their 
bearing  upon  the  problem  of  metaphysics  or  on- 
tology —  that  of  defining  the  ultimate  nature  of 
the  world.  The  metaphysician  who  would  base 
his  theory  truly  on  experience  has  occasion  to  ask 
himself  with  some  scrupulousness  what  it  is  exactly 
that  experience  reveals :  what  it  is  that  is  given. 
For  out  of  the  fragments  of  the  given,  or  others 
fundamentally  Hke  them  —  fragments  material, 
psychical,  objective,  or  whatever  they  may  prove 
to  be  —  he  must  put  the  universe  together. 

Now  "given"  (that  pet  term  of  philosophers, 
which  common  men  know  not)  is  not  only  ambig- 
uous but  triguous,  if  there  were  such  a  word:  it 
may  mean  known;  or  present  in  the  way  of  con- 
tent, conceived;  or  present  as  experience.  (Present 
to  what,  do  you  ask,  in  the  latter  case  ?  Present 
as  a  schoolboy  is  present  whose  teacher  has  not 
yet  arrived;  present  to  the  walls  and  the  benches 
—  here  the  infra- experiences  that  make  up  the 
rest  of  the  psychic  organism ;  and  the  teacher,  of 
course,  the  supervenient  self- perception). 

(1)  If  "given"  means  known,  then  what  is 
known  is  exclusively  the  object.     Whence  it  follows 


C.   A.   STRONG  185 

that  the  universe  must  be  put  together  out  of  ob- 
jects. And  indeed,  since  philosophy  may  safely  be 
said  to  be  a  synthesis  of  things  which  we  know, 
there  could  manifestly  be  no  better  material  out 
of  which  to  put  it  together.  But,  in  doing  so,  the 
philosopher  must  not  allow  any  trace  of  experience 
or  the  knower  to  cling  to  the  conception  of  objects 
—  he  must  not  say  that  objects  are  inconceivable 
apart  from  a  subject,  or  that  they  are  essentially 
some  one's  experiences  —  since  otherwise  he  is 
including  in  the  conception  of  what  is  known  some- 
thing additional  to  what  knowledge  has  revealed 
about  it.  It  does  not  belong  to  the  conception  of 
a  thing  or  existence  to  be  known  by  or  given  to  a 
subject;  this  is  an  extraneous  relation,  which 
accrues  to  it  accidentally.  It  does  not  belong  to 
the  conception  of  my  mind,  for  instance,  to  be 
known  by  you,  though  as  an  idealist  you  should 
egregiously  think  so.  If  then  "given"  means 
known,  the  universe  consists  of  objects  which  are 
not  essentially  such,  which  are  not  experiences  in 
the  sense  that  they  have  anything  of  the  knowing 
experience  about  their  persons,  and  which  are  not 
other  experiences  than  the  knowing  experience 
except  so  far  as  knowledge,  original  or  subsequent, 
discovers  this  to  be  so.  On  the  other  hand  these 
objects  must  not  be  taken  at  their  face  value,  as 
identical  in  quality  with  what  the  first  knowing 
experience  presents  them  as  being,  since  knowledge 
is  substitutional  and  its  primarily  practical  function 


186  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

allows  of  a  considerable  divergence  between  the 
first  presentment  of  an  object  and  the  object  as  it 
is  (and  is  finally  discovered  to  be).  What  objects 
are  we  can  of  course  learn  only  through  present- 
ments, or  through  a  collation  and  criticism  of 
different  presentments.  This,  we  shall  find,  is  the 
ultimate  task  of  epistemology. 

(2)  "Given,'*  next,  may  mean  present  as  con- 
tent (this  indeed  is  probably  the  normal  significa- 
tion of  the  word) ;  and  those  who  have  nothing 
but  content  and  who  call  that  "experience"  will 
accordingly  hold  that  the  world  must  be  put  to- 
gether out  of  experiences  taken  objectively.  But 
an  experience  taken  objectively  means,  in  the  case 
of  memory,  that  you  must  not  take  the  remember- 
ing experience  and  you  must  not  take  the  experi- 
ence remembered,  but  you  must  take  the  latter  as 
seen  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  former  —  in 
short,  a  memorial  appearance.  And,  similarly, 
in  the  case  of  perception,  it  means  that  we  must 
not  take  objects  themselves,  but  we  must  take 
them  as  seen  from  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  dif- 
ferent points  of  view.  To  perceptive  and  me- 
morial appearances  we  must  add  all  the  different 
conceptions  of  the  real,  the  possible,  the  fantastic, 
the  non-existent  that  ever  have  been  —  since  every- 
thing that  a  human  being  has  ever  experienced  is 
indefeasibly  real,  just  as  he  experienced  it  —  and 
put  them  together  into  a  universe  as  best  we  can. 
The  result  will,  I  fear,  be  a  universe  consisting 


C.  A.  STRONG  187 

in  large  part  of  men's  foolish  and  erroneous  notions 
of  things.^  We  shall  later  see  that  contents  are 
not  existences  or  metaphysical  building- blocks  at 
all,  and  that  a  universe  composed  of  them  is  a 
mere  chaos  of  appearances,  a  nulliverse. 

(3)  "Given,"  finally,  may  mean  existent  as 
experience,  and  this  is  in  one  sense  the  givenest 
of  all.  That  is,  it  is  most  direct  and  vital  to  the 
knower,  to  his  inner  life  and  sentiency.  Unfor- 
tunately, in  the  other  senses  of  the  word  it  is 
not  at  all  given,  either  to  an  intuiting  "conscious- 
ness "  or  to  itself  or  to  anything  else.  What  makes 
experience  appear  to  be  thus  given  is  the  fact  that 
it  is  so  easily  emerged  from  and  thought  about. 
We  thinking  beings,  particularly  philosophers,  no 
sooner  have  an  experience  than,  presto !  we  think 
about  it  and  so  convert  it  into  an  object.  But 
in  its  primal  character  it  was  not  an  object;  and 
so,  if  we  take  experiences  in  this  sense  and  use 
them  as  building-stones  to  construct  a  universe, 
we  shall  again  have  to  divest  them  carefully  of  all 
subjectivity  and  abjure  the  doctrine  that  the  things 
which  we  know  cannot  exist  without  a  knower. 
Now,  since  experiences,  in  order  to  be  talked  about 
by  philosophers,  must  have  undergone  this  sea- 
change  and  become  objects,  the  third  sense  of 
"given"  comes  round  in  its  metaphysical  result  to 

*  But  are  not  men's  foolish  and  erroneous  notions  of  things,  it  may  be 
asked,  parts  of  the  universe  ?  Qud  sentient  experiences,  doubtless,  but  not 
qud  concepts.    A  concept  is  not  an  existence. 


188  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

the  first  sense,  leaving  those  only  who  turn  contents 
into  existences  insecurely  perched  between  two 
stools. 

Objects,  as  we  have  seen,  are  given  always  sub- 
stitutionally,  under  the  form  of  contents,  and  the 
knowing  experience  is,  so  to  say,  the  uniform  giver. 
While  then  it  is  false  that  the  knowing  experience 
is  the  only  thing  we  know  directly,  since  it  is  not 
known,  or  given  in  this  sense,  at  the  moment  at  all, 
it  is  the  only  thing  that  by  projection  serves  for 
the  presentation  of  objects  and  that  can  be  known 
retrospectively  in  its  unprojected  immediacy.  If, 
therefore,  in  retrospect  we  abandon  the  objectify- 
ing practical  attitude  that  gave  to  it  projection, 
we  have  before  us  the  piece  of  reality  which  a  mo- 
ment before  we  personally  were;  and  this  is  the 
only  piece  of  reality  that  can  be  given  to  us  with 
so  high  a  degree  of  immediateness  and  adequacy. 
This  unique  piece  of  reality  proves,  when  so  cog- 
nized, to  be  a  sentient  experience. 

But  I  shall  be  reminded  that  I  have  advanced 
the  view  that  objects  of  introspection  too  are  sub- 
stitutionally  known,  and  asked  whether  this  does 
not  place  all  objects  of  knowledge,  including  even 
our  most  intimate  experiences,  in  their  proper 
reality  effectually  beyond  us,  so  that  what  things 
are  in  themselves  we  can  never  know  but  only 
adjust  our  relations  to  them.  We  are  now  at  the 
heart  of  the  subject.     This  is  indeed  a  searching 


C.  A.   STRONG  189 

question,  and  if  the  suggested  answer  be  correct 
panempiricism  and  all  other  gnostic  theories  must 
disappear  from  sight  in  the  Unknowable.  The 
question  has  two  stages  :  (1)  What  ground  have  we, 
rational  or  other,  for  assuming  that  the  knowing 
experience  has  to  do  with  an  object  at  all,  distinct 
from  its  content?  (2)  What  ground  have  we  for 
thinking  that  the  content  holds  good  of  or  describes 
the  object,  so  as  really  to  give  us  acquaintance 
with  it,  or  is  true  of  it  in  any  other  sense  than  that 
of  enabling  us  to  live  in  its  presence? 

These  are  questions  too  large  to  be  discussed  in 
the  present  paper.  I  will  only  say  that  to  me  per- 
sonally it  does  not  seem  impossible  to  answer 
them  satisfactorily,  and  to  obtain  the  Jfinal  ac- 
quittal of  knowledge  (ultimate  knowledge,  that  is) 
from  the  charge  of  not  telling  us  the  truth  about 
reality. 

Let  us  consider,  in  closing,  certain  consequences 
of  the  fact  (if  it  be  a  fact)  that  the  knowledge  of 
consciousness  or  human  experience  is  substitu- 
tional. We  should  have  here  the  same  trio  of  cate- 
gories —  object,  subject,  content  —  as  before,  and, 
introspective  knowledge  being  retrospective,  the 
cognitive  relation  would  again  be  aimed  backward, 
as  in  memory ;  there  would  be,  in  other  words,  the 
experience  introspected,  the  later  experience  medi- 
ating introspection  of  it,  and  the  projection  of  the 
latter  into  the  seat  of  the  former  in  the  shape  of 


190  SUBSTITUTIONALISM 

content.     Hence  the  possibility  of  the  same  three 
theories  as  before:    a  reahstic  theory  ignoring  the 
whole  apparatus  of  cognition  and  supposing  the 
introspected  experience  somehow  to  stand  before 
us  with  aboriginal  immediacy  and  authenticity  — 
naive  realism,  in  short,  in  the  field  of  introspection ; 
a  transcendental  idealism  in  the  same  field,  regard- 
ing the  mental  fact  as  a  thing  whose  essence  con- 
sists in  being  observed  (the  proposition  "feelings 
exist  by  being  felt"  being  confused  with  the  propo- 
sition "feehngs  exist  by  being  introspected")  and 
degrading  our  states  of  mind  to  the  level  of  appear- 
ances  and  patches   upon  reality  —  in  one   word, 
epiphenomena ;    finally,  an  immediate  empiricism 
denying  the  psychical,  as  we  have  seen,  to  be  a 
proper  character  of  experience  or  reality  at  all. 
The  labor  of  the  substitutionalist  must  be  devoted 
to  showing,  if  possible,  that  in  this  case  too  the  de- 
liverances of  knowledge  strike  through  to  reality 
and  illumine  it. 

But  we  have  once  more  been  brought  round 
to  what  is  the  deepest  problem  of  the  theory  of 
knowledge  —  a  problem  of  validity  and  not  of 
mere  mechanism:  whether  it  is  possible  to  make 
good  our  instinctive  conviction  that  knowledge  is 
really  knowledge. 

In  the  foregoing  essay  I  have  talked  bravely  of 
"my  theory,"  but  the  instructed  reader  will  have 
recognized  that  it  is  in  essentials  Professor  James's, 


C.  A.   STRONG  191 

as  may  be  seen  from  his  articles  "  On  the  Function 
of  Cognition,"  Mind,  1885,  pp.  27-44;  "The 
Knowing  of  Things  Together,'*  Psychological  Re- 
view, 1895,  pp.  106-111;  and  "A  World  of  Pure 
Experience,  I,'*  Journal  of  Philosophy,  etc.,  1904, 
pp.  538-543. 

Honor  then  to  whom  honor  is  due. 


WORLD-PICTURES 


WORLD-PICTURES 

By  Walter  Boughton  Pitkin 

It  once  happened  that  a  circle  of  logicians  and 
scientists  withdrew  from  the  turmoil  of  daily  life 
to  discuss  the  important  questions  of  metaphysics. 
After  having  talked  and  waxed  wise  through  learned 
intercourse  for  an  unknown  period,  one  of  them 
chanced  to  look  off  into  the  world  they  had  tem- 
porarily deserted,  and  discovered,  to  the  dismay 
of  the  whole  party,  that  the  common  people  had 
fallen  under  the  sway  of  a  band  of  base  sorcerers 
during  their  absence.  The  sorcerers,  it  appeared 
to  the  horrified  onlookers,  had  won  the  masses 
over  to  a  cheap  but  pleasing  philosophy  by  play- 
ing upon  their  artistic  instincts.  From  the  shouts 
that  reached  the  ears  of  the  thoughtful  men,  it  was 
inferred  that  the  entire  world  of  ordinary  con- 
sciousnesses had  gone  mad  over  a  picture  philos- 
ophy, for  men  were  heard  to  say:  "I  have  a  very 
good  picture  of  that  in  my  mind,"  and  "The  scene 
is  indelibly  printed  upon  my  brain,"  and  so  on. 
And  hordes  of  the  possessed  gathered  around  the 
sorcerers  to  listen  with  bated  breath  to  Platonesque 
discourses.  Filled  with  pity  at  the  plight  of  the 
multitudes  thus  enthralled  by  miserable  magic,  the 

195 


196  WORLD-PICTURES 

thoughtful  men  resolved  to  descend  forthwith  from 
the  windy  hilltop  where  they  had  been  convened 
and  to  break  the  insidious  power. 

After  seeking  vainly  to  disillusion  some  common 
people  encountered  on  the  downward  road,  the 
thoughtful  reformers  united  in  an  onslaught  upon 
one  of  the  sorcerers  whom  they  overtook  just  as 
he  was  about  to  wave  his  wand  of  sophistries  over 
a  large  band  of  young  men  who  had  come  to  him 
in  search  of  the  Truth.  The  reformers  held  their 
peace  long  enough  to  hear  the  first  words  addressed 
to  the  newcomers.  But  no  sooner  had  the  sorcerer 
proclaimed  that  his  was  a  philosophy  of  world- 
pictures,  than  a  biologist  in  the  ranks  of  the 
thoughtful  men  cried  out:  "Spare  yourselves  the 
temptation  of  being  lulled  by  these  phantasms, 
O  youths !    There  are  no  world- pictures.'* 

"A  madman  ! "  somebody  hooted.  But  the  biolo- 
gist was  undaunted. 

"  Call  me  what  you  will.  The  truth  stands  that 
there  are  no  world- pictures.  We  men  of  science 
and  philosophy  have  wrestled  over  the  problem  a 
month  for  every  minute  your  misguided  teacher  has 
spent  seriously  over  it;  and  in  spite  of  many  dif- 
ferences on  other  matters  we  agree  that  the  world 
is  so  constituted  that  pictures  are  impossible.  What 
you  imagine  are  pictures  are  only  rough  symbols, 
signal  lanterns  in  the  night  of  ignorance." 

"He  speaks  in  pictures  himself!'*  exclaimed  a 
fair-haired  artist. 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      197 

"If  you  do  not  want  us  to  smell  a  joke,"  called 
out  a  serious  young  engineer  in  the  throng,  "give 
us  reasons  for  the  faith  that  is  in  you." 

"  Look  at  that  great  dog  across  the  road,  young 
sceptic,"  the  biologist  said,  "and  tell  me  what  you 
actually  see." 

"A  shaggy,  good-natured,  young  St.  Bernard." 

"I  have  blurred  the  paint  on  your  world-picture 
sadly!"  retorted  the  scientist  tauntingly.  "You 
see  only  a  colored  form,  various  shades  of  red  and 
yellow,  all  of  which  you  interpret  by  a  sheer  act  of 
your  own  mind  as  a  shaggy,  good-natured  young 
St.  Bernard.  You  do  not  see  the  name,  nor  the 
size  nor  the  shape  nor  even  the  color  you  ascribe 
to  the  dog.  I  should  like  to  know  what  sort 
of  a  picture  the  world  has  given  you  of  itself, 
then." 

"The  man's  right!"  exclaimed  the  artist  in  ad- 
miration. "I  can  speak  with  all  the  authority  of 
my  painful  experiences  in  my  master's  studio;  the 
colors  and  forms  you  think  you  see  you  just  im- 
agine. But,  after  all,  I'm  not  sure  that  this  dis- 
proves all  world-pictures." 

"It  doesn't,"  joined  in  a  chemist.  "World- 
pictures  are  not  these  common  hasty  perceptions 
that  rush  in  and  out  of  the  mind  like  flares  of  sum- 
mer lightning.  The  great  teacher  "  —  pointing 
toward  the  sorcerer,  who  was  listening  courteously 
but  with  some  trace  of  amusement  —  "  means  by 
world- pictures  the  scientific  theories  that  have  been 


198  WORLD-PICTURES 

built  up  by  painstaking  experiments  and  strict  logic. 
In  our  mental  picture  of  the  law  of  gravitation,  for 
instance,  we  have  a  genuine  photograph  of  the  be- 
havior of  masses.  All  the  refinements  of  trained 
observation  and  reflection  have  contributed  to 
make  this  law  an  exact  statement  of  the  facts 
about  which  it  speaks." 

"True,  save  for  one  word,"  the  biologist  an- 
swered. "Your  law  formulates  the  nature  of  gravi- 
tating matter  with  a  few  letters  and  mathematical 
symbols;  but  it  does  not  truly  picture  it.  It  is  a 
shorthand  expression  for  the  behavior  of  an  infi- 
nite number  of  molecules,  meteors,  and  nebulae. 
But  it  does  not  give  you  an  actual  image  of  all  the 
motions  of  telescopic  and  microscopic  bodies  to 
which  its  brief  signs  refer  and  of  which  they  claim 
to  be  an  explanation.  And  you  should  be  glad, 
young  men,  that  you  do  not  have  to  know  the  laws 
of  Nature  through  the  medium  of  pictures.  If 
your  minds  were  photograph  galleries  of  the  uni- 
verse, you  would  soon  be  as  embarrassed  as  a 
shopkeeper  who  tried  to  keep  account  of  all 
transactions  in  his  store  by  setting  up  a  kinetoscope 
wherewith  to  snapshot  the  acts  of  clerks,  cus- 
tomers, and  wagon  boys.  Your  knowledge  of  the 
world  is  luckily  a  set  of  accounts  with  Reality ;  your 
theories  are  the  abbreviations  of  a  bookkeeper,  and 
they  have  all  the  advantages  of  brevity,  simplicity, 
and  freedom  from  useless  details.  Why  crave 
so    madly,   then,    for    world -pictures,   when    you 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      199 

already  have  something  infinitely  better  for  human 
purposes?'* 

Silence  reigned  among  the  hearers.  Finally  a 
country  doctor  agreed  that  the  scientist's  words 
fitted  admirably  in  with  what  was  known  about 
the  mechanism  of  the  nervous  system.  "I  never 
could  straighten  out  the  puzzle  of  world- pictures," 
he  confessed.  "How  physical  objects  can  ever 
reproduce  themselves  at  the  inside  ends  of  the 
sensory  nerves  is  simply  unimaginable.  I  can 
understand  how  some  sort  of  a  current  passes  along 
the  nerve  tracts  and  registers  itself  somehow  in  the 
form  of  consciousness." 

"Wonderful  man!"  was  the  murmur  of  many. 
"This  is  the  arch -mystery." 

"But  it  is  absurd  to  say  that  the  effect  of  a 
long  chain  of  intricate  causes  can  look  Uke  some 
early  member  of  that  chain." 

"Perhaps  the  dissenter  is  right,"  a  waverer 
shouted.  "  Let  us  turn  him  upon  the  great  teacher 
himself,  and  we  shall  at  least  listen  to  a  rare 
debate." 

"Pray  do  not  call  me  a  great  teacher,"  expostu- 
lated the  sorcerer,  as  the  crowd  pushed  the  biologist 
and  his  thoughtful  friends  up  to  the  steps  from 
which  the  talk  on  world- pictures  was  to  have  been 
held.  "I  am  only  a  poor  artist  who  could  never 
make  a  living  with  brushes  and  paints,  on  account 
of  my  bad  habit  of  indulging  in  metaphysical 
dreams  about  the  nature  of  pictures  when  I  should 


200  WORLD-PICTURES 

have  been  grinding  out  charcoal  studies.  While 
philosophers  and  psychologists  have  been  busily 
delving  into  the  mysteries  of  neurons  and  percep- 
tions, I  have  contented  myself  with  an  innocently 
unphilosophical  study.  But,  would  you  believe  it  ? 
after  having  Ustened  to  many  wise  debates  about 
the  nature  of  knowledge,  I  became  convinced  that, 
in  order  to  speculate  about  the  relation  of  mind  to 
the  real  world  of  which  it  is  a  part,  one  must  know 
more  about  pictures  than  about  the  cortex.  For 
in  order  to  discuss  rationally  whether  experience 
is  pictorial  or  representative  in  any  manner,  we 
must  jSrst  make  perfectly  clear  in  our  minds  what 
we  understand  by  a  picture.  Or,  as  a  mathema- 
tician might  put  it,  we  must  make  certain  postu- 
lates about  pictures ;  these  postulates  being  derived 
in  conference  from  our  habitual,  rough  use  of  the 
word  *  picture  * ;  and  then  we  must  see  whether  ex- 
perience, when  critically  viewed,  can  sustain  these 
postulates.  But  which  of  the  philosophers  has 
ever  done  this.^'* 

"We  have  been  hearing  about  world- pictures 
and  all  other  kinds  of  illustrated  editions  of  the 
cosmos  ever  since  the  days  of  Plato,"  broke  in  an 
eminent  physicist  among  the  reformers.  "So,  if 
you  can  tell  us  anything  new  about  these  things, 
I  shall  go  to  church  in  the  art  galleries.  Though 
I  have  never  bothered  to  consult  the  dictionary 
about  the  word,  I  am  sure  a  picture  is  simply 
*  anything  which,  when  perceived,  suggests  to  the 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      201 

spectator  some  other  object  by  virtue  of  its  own 
resemblance  to  the  latter.*  ** 

"An  excellent  beginning,"  said  the  sorcerer. 
"You  distinguish  it  from  a  symbol  by  the  fact 
that  the  picture  itself  looks  like  the  portrayed 
thing,  while  the  symbol  need  not.  But  let  us  look 
farther.'*  And  the  crowd  drew  closer  to  the 
speakers. 

"  How  complete  must  the  resemblance  be  in  order 
that  we  may  fairly  call  a  thing  a  picture?" 

"Why,  any  perceived  resemblance  is  enough  to 
make  the  object  resembhng  another  a  picture  of 
the  latter.  The  rude  Hues  of  a  newspaper  carica- 
ture constitute  a  true  picture.  And  yet,  the  line 
between  symbol  and  picture  is  not  a  sharp  one ;  a 
representation  of  a  very  inquisitive  person  which 
showed  the  subject  in  the  form  of  an  interrogation 
mark  on  legs  would  be  a  picture  only  in  so  far  as 
the  clothing,  facial  expression,  or  some  other  one 
feature  were  actually  portrayed." 

"Of  course,  you  know  that  a  fixed  portraiture 
in  colors  or  stone  can  give  only  one  aspect  of  its 
subject." 

"No  artist  can  show  in  a  single  landscape 
how  a  country-side  looks  from  twenty  different 
hilltops." 

"As  there  are  indefinitely  many  aspects  of  physi- 
cal objects,  it  follows  that  there  are  as  many  sepa- 
rate pictures  possible,  does  it  not.'^" 

"And  even  more.    In  painting,  at  least,  the  view 


202  WORLD-PICTURES 

from  each  angle  and  distance  varies  widely  accord- 
ing to  the  color  and  intensity  of  the  illumination 
and  the  clearness  of  the  atmosphere." 

"When  Thackeray  drew  a  picture  of  a  huge 
cloud  of  powder  smoke  and  labelled  it  *The  Battle 
of  Trafalgar,'  was  this  drawing  called  a  picture  of 
the  battle  only  by  way  of  witticism?" 

"From  the  philosopher's  standpoint,"  laughed 
the  physicist,  "a  cloud  of  smoke  was  doubtless  a 
real  aspect  of  the  famous  sea  fight.  So,  too,  might 
a  soUd  blackish  smear  on  a  canvas  be  a  *  life-like' 
picture  of  a  colored  gentleman  in  an  unlighted 
cellar  on  a  rainy  night.  All  this,  my  dear  sir,  is 
true  but  not  philosophy." 

"Perhaps  not;  but  bear  with  me  a  moment.  It 
often  happens,  I  believe,  that  a  single  splash  of 
color  can,  under  certain  conditions,  be  a  perfect 
picture  of  a  man's  face,  or  of  a  house,  or  of  a  tree, 
or  of  almost  anything  visible." 

"Certainly." 

"You  have  observed,"  the  sorcerer  went  on, 
"  that  the  conditions  under  which  you  see  a  picture 
best  are  not  those  under  which  the  portrayed  thing 
itself  can  be  best  seen.  An  artist  may  look  at  a 
seashore  on  a  gray,  misty  day  from  a  vantage  point 
a  thousand  feet  from  the  strand ;  but  the  spectator 
of  his  picture  will  not  stand  a  thousand  feet  away 
from  the  canvas  nor  put  the  picture  in  a  gloomy 
corner  in  order  to  get  the  intended  effect." 

"Surely  not!" 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      203 

"It  is  hardly  necessary  to  remark  that  the  ma- 
terials entering  into  the  composition  of  a  picture 
need  not  be  the  same  as  those  of  the  portrayed 
object." 

Merriment  stirred  the  assemblage.  "As  if  a 
portrait  of  Washington  had  to  be  made  of  human 
skin,  eyes,  hair,  and  clothes  ! "  was  the  cry.  "Why, 
the  masters  of  music  even  picture  emotions  with 
nothing  save  melodies  and  chords." 

"Do  you  not  see,"  said  the  sorcerer,  "why  I 
believe  in  world-pictures  ?  The  resemblance  be- 
tween the  empirical  phase  of  an  object  at  a  given 
moment  and  the  total  nature  of  that  object  need  be 
no  more  than  the  peculiarly  limited  resemblance 
we  find  between  a  portrait  and  the  person  depicted. 
What  the  *mind  stuff'  is,  out  of  which  empirical 
phases  of  things  are  made,  I  'm  sure  I  cannot  say ; 
and  for  our  present  purposes,  this  problem  need 
not  be  solved.  It  is  enough  to  know  that,  as  a 
matter  of  every- day  fact,  these  empirical  phases  do 
suggest,  stand  for,  and  imply  other  things  than 
their  own  bare  selves.  And,  even  if  we  were  to 
admit  that  these  suggested  things  are  in  turn  noth- 
ing but  revivals  of  previous  experiences,  we  should 
still  properly  call  the  former  true  pictures.  Again, 
though  we  might  concede,  as  some  psychologists 
do,  that  there  is  no  evidence  to  prove  that  one 
experienced  character  revives  an  old  one  by  virtue 
of  their  qualitative  resemblances,  we  should  still 
have  a  right  to  say  that  the  former  is  a  picture  of 


204  WORLD-PICTURES 

the  latter  because  of  such  resemblances  as  may  be 
experienced  after  revival. 

"But  there  is  a  real  world  which  is  known  only 
at  intervals  and  partially,  as  every  dictate  of  prac- 
tical thought  compels  me  to  believe;  and  experi- 
ence asserts  itself  to  be  some  sort  of  a  picture  of 
that  world,  though  in  what  precise  sense  men  are 
not  agreed.'* 

A  psychologist  who  had  been  listening  to  this  dia- 
logue with  growing  vexation  burst  out  at  this  point : 

"You  are  playing  with  us,  O  sorcerer.  You  talk 
of  art  works  and  would  have  us  spring  on  the 
nimble  wings  of  analogy  to  mental  pictures.  But 
if  you  seriously  mean  to  defend  the  theory  that 
your  experiences  are  pictures  of  things  outside  of 
experience,  I  beg  you  to  show  me  how  you  can 
possibly  be  aware  of  this  startling  fact.  In  order 
to  know  that  a  thing  is  a  picture  of  something  else, 
you  must  be  able  to  put  the  two  side  by  side  for  a 
comparison.  How  can  you  compare  an  experience, 
though,  with  something  beyond  all  experience  ? 
How,  with  only  a  conjectural  picture  of  an  unseen, 
unknown  object,  can  you  pronounce  the  likeness 
good  or  bad?'* 

**  This  is  the  crucial  question.  The  comparison 
of  appearance  with  reality  cannot  be  made  directly, 
of  course.  But  it  is  forced  upon  us  all  by  our 
inevitable  conception  of  the  relation  between  cause 
and  effect.  Is  it  not  agreed  that  the  effect  of  a 
given  cause  is  both  like  and  unlike  the  latter  ?    Like 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN     205 

the  existence  of  the  causal  relation  itself,  this  is 
unprovable  in  strict   logic;   so  you  may  call  it  a 

*  category '  or  a  '  postulate,'  as  you  please.  But 
the  fact  remains  that  it  satisfies  the  essential  de- 
mands of  a  picture  theory;  for,  in  so  far  as  we 
have  to  think  of  every  effect  as  being  like  its  cause 
in  some  aspects,  we  have  to  concede,  I  believe,  that 
every  effect  bears  the  same  relation  to  its  cause  in 
reflective  experience  as  a  painting  does  to  its  theme 
in  perception.  For  all  our  experiences  are  both 
causes  and  effects ;  thus  it  comes  about  that  so  far 
as  they  are   the   latter,  they  are  '  expressions  *  or 

*  manifestations  *  of  a  wider  reality.  Incidentally, 
too,  I  might  say  that,  in  so  far  as  they  are  causes, 
the  real  world  is  an  *  expression '  of  human  nature. 
It  is  not  fair  to  protest  against  such  world- pictures 
on  the  ground  that  the  resemblance  between  cause 
and  effect  may  be  a  mere  mental  necessity,  a  bare 
postulate,  or  something  even  more  human.  For, 
as  in  any  ordinary  work  of  art,  it  is  just  this  mental 
necessity  of  experiencing  one  thing  to  resemble 
another  that  establishes  the  pictorial  relation." 

Said  an  eminent  physicist  who  had  thus  far  held 
his  peace:  "These  abstruse  words  don't  convince 
me  that  experiences  are  not  mere  symbols ;  never- 
theless, I  am  charitably  inclined  towards  your  pic- 
ture theory ;  for  I  believe  that  it  could  not  bind  a 
spell  so  easily  upon  all  these  thousands  of  business 
men  and  common  people  by  empty  tricks  and 
wand- waving  alone.    Furthermore,  I  have  observed 


206  WORLD-PICTURES 

a  peculiarity  of  organic  matter  which  leads  me 
to  suspect  that  world- pictures  are  not  utterly 
absurd.  Let  those  who  scout  pictures  on  logical 
grounds  alone  consider  that  living  forms  have  the 
power  of  impressing  upon  ordinary  matter  their 
own  structures  and  functions.  The  segmentation 
of  the  lowest  bacteria  illustrates  this  as  well  as 
does  the  growth  of  the  highest  vertebrate.  Is  this 
not  evidence  enough  to  make  us  cautious  about 
denying  that  matter  can  reproduce  its  own  form 
and  function  in  a  different  manner,  namely  in  the 
world  of  experience  ?  Merely  because  we  cannot 
describe  how  this  happens  is  no  reason  for  doubting 
the  event,  any  more  than  our  great  ignorance  of 
the  details  of  organic  self- propagation  should  be  an 
argument  against  the  reality  of  birth  and  inheri- 
tance. Reason  with  me,  therefore,  as  with  one 
whom  you  may  perhaps  convert." 

The  thoughtful  men  smiled  among  themselves 
at  these  words ;  for  they  well  knew  the  potent  ar- 
guments the  physicist  held  in  readiness  for  the 
sorcerer's  attack. 

"As  I  understand  you,"  the  teacher  said,  "you 
say  these  signs  do  not  portray  the  nature  of  the 
great  environing  world,  but  simply  serve  to  tell  us 
how  to*  act  in  reference  to  it." 

"  That 's  it.  I  do  not  deny,  as  some  of  my  friends 
do,  the  existence  of  an  external  world.  I  see  that 
it  is  illogical  to  infer  from  the  fact  that  everything 
about  which  we  can  talk  and  think  is  ipso  facto  an 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN     207 

experience,  the  conclusion  that  these  things  are 
nothing  but  experiences.  The  dog  I  see  over  yon- 
der may,  so  far  as  logic  goes,  be  at  one  and  the 
same  time  a  percept  and  something  more,  say  a 
living  animal.  So  you  see,  I  stand  half  way  be- 
twixt my  friends  who  say  the  whole  world  is  noth- 
ing but  a  complex  of  experiences  and  yourself 
with  your  theory  of  world- pictures.  I  differ  from 
you  in  that  I  cannot  see  how  anybody  can  know 
our  experiences  to  be  replicas  of  something  outside 
of  us.  I  think  we  have  been  led  into  the  error  of 
calling  them  such  by  virtue  of  their  efficacy  in  prac- 
tical life.  My  idea  of  that  dog,  for  instance,  I  call 
true  because  its  claims  can  be  substantiated  by 
later  experiences.  I  do  not  ever  compar'e  my  per- 
cept with  a  transcendent  canine  and  find  it  to  look 
like  the  latter ;  the  seen,  heard,  felt,  and  smelt  ani- 
mal simply  behaves  consistently  with  the  action  and 
character  demanded  of  him  by  my  thought  of  him.'* 

"Suppose  we  try  your  theory  on  the  dog,"  the 
sorcerer  said.  *'  Tell  me  once  more  what  vou  now 
experience  the  dog  a^.'* 

"A  St.  Bernard,  perhaps  three  years  old,  a  jovial 
beast  apparently,  and  with  an  exceptionally  long, 
curly  coat  of  brown  and  yellowish  white.  I  might 
add  more,  but  this  will  do." 

"And  how  do  you  prove  all  this?" 

"  I  ask  his  owner  about  his  age,  or  even  examine 
the  animal's  teeth  and  claws.  I  feel  of  his  hair  to 
test  its  length  and  texture ;  and  I  compare  its  color 


208  WORLD-PICTURES 

with  some  standard  shade.  You  see,  I  merely  com- 
pare later  experiences  with  an  earlier  one  that  is 
undergoing  a  test  in  their  crucible." 

"And  do  you  believe  that,  while  you  were  per- 
ceiving and  testing  the  St.  Bernard,  the  real  object 
causing  or  contributing  to  cause  your  perceptions 
of  the  dog  was  substantially  the  same  throughout 
the  whole  test?  Or  might  a  wholly  new  object 
have  shot  into  your  field  of  vision  and  touch  and 
hearing  every  millionth  of  a  second  without  varying 
either  your  perception  or  what  you  were  referring 
to  in  your  thoughts?" 

"Of  course,  I  can  never  prove  this  does  not 
happen,  for  all  my  proofs  are  based,  in  the  last 
analysis,  upon  differences  in  objects  which  can  be 
perceived  by  some  device.  But  the  general  lawful 
character  of  the  world  and  especially  my  ability 
to  manage  it  successfully  with  the  aid  of  my  ideas 
about  it  proves,  for  all  practical  purposes,  the  non- 
existence of  the  cosmic  jest  you  have  described. 
The  same  dog  that  I  first  saw  is  the  object  of  all 
my  later  thoughts,  and  also  the  objective  source  of 
the  perceptions  I  use  in  testing  my  original  opinion 
of  the  beast." 

"Excellent!  I  see  you  are  willing  to  accept  a 
common-sense  assumption.  Now  tell  me  whether 
the  objective  dog  proved  by  his  actions,  i.  e.,  by 
the  kind  of  perceptions  he  led  you  irresistibly  to 
in  your  test,  —  that  he  is  really  what  you  thought 
him  to  be  at  first?" 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN     209 

"Certainly  the  objective  animal  is  the  kind  that 
produces  in  me  experiences  of  a  certain  kind,'*  the 
physicist  admitted.  "  But,  bless  you !  this  is  a 
very  different  story  from  the  one  you  have  been 
singing  about  world- pictures  !  Don't  you  see  the 
vast  dissimilarity  between  knowing  that  a  percept 
is  really  of  an  external  object  that  produces  certain 
other  percepts,  and  knowing  that  a  percept  is  a 
copy  of  an  external  thing  ?  I  am  saying  merely 
that  my  first  perception  of  the  St.  Bernard  was 
true  because,  when  accepted  at  face  value  and 
acted  upon,  it  led  up  to  other  perceptions  which 
it  originally  imphed.  Each  perception  is  a  symbol 
or  mental  sign  of  a  reality ;  I  cannot  see  therefore 
how  a  system  of  connected  symbols  can,  simply 
by  virtue  of  their  power  to  hang  together  and  cor- 
roborate one  another,  become  replicas  of  the  object 
to  which  they  refer.  You  might  as  well  say  that  a 
bookkeeper's  balance  sheet,  whenever  it  *  comes 
out  right,'  is  therewith  transformed  into  a  duplicate 
of  the  events  and  merchandise  to  which  its  figures 
refer !" 

"Your  ignorance  of  pictures  has  led  you  into 
two  bad  arguments.  Although  you  have  admitted 
that  the  objective  entity  we  call  a  St.  Bernard  dog 
produces  your  perceptions  (in  part,  at  least),  you 
refuse  to  call  these  perceptions  pictures,  even  when 
they  express  the  behavior  of  the  external  real.  The 
real  dog,  you  say  confidently,  is  the  object  from 
which   certain   colors,   forms,   motions   and   other 

14 


210  WORLD-PICTURES 

qualities  come  into  your  mind;  furthermore,  he 
gives  you  somehow  a  knowledge  of  the  way  he  acts 
in  response  to  various  stimuH,  for  you  can  make  him 
do  certain  things,  by  whisthng  to  him,  commanding 
him  to  *  charge,'  beating  him,  and  so  on.  And  yet 
all  this  knowledge,  exact  enough  to  guide  even  your 
future  conduct,  is  not  an  expression  of  a  real  aspect 
of  the  external  animal.  Strange  forgetfulness ! 
You  do  not  admit  the  possibility  of  there  being  a 
class  of  world- pictures  like  that  well-known  vari- 
ety of  human  pictures  which  we  call  dramatic 
expression.** 

"  O  wild  dreamer !  Do  you  want  us  to  believe 
that  the  universe  is  both  playwright  and  come- 
dian?'* a  metaphysician  bawled. 

"Not  at  all.  I  should  be  glad,  though,  if  you 
would  agree  with  me  that  the  performances  of 
comedians  are  only  peculiar  developments  of  a 
common  property  of  all  experienced  things.  And 
this  is  no  mysticism  nor  cheap  anthropomorphism. 
Dramatic  expression  is  simply  expression  of  actions. 
I  would  ask  you  to  believe  nothing  more  than  that 
the  image  of  a  thing's  behavior  in  one  or  more  situa- 
tions is  a  genuine  'picture  of  the  thing.  Always  an 
aspect  though,  you  should  remember.  As  the 
tragedian  expresses  the  true  nature  of  his  char- 
acter by  his  behavior,  his  gestures,  and  his  mien, 
so  do  these  thrills  in  our  organisms  we  call  colors, 
sounds,  and  so  on,  express  the  natures  of  their 
objective  determinants.     Does  not  everybody  as- 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN     211 

sume  this  in  practical  life  ?  The  engineer  finds  the 
nature  of  his  steel  girders  'expressed'  in  their  re- 
sistance to  stresses,  strains,  acids,  heat,  cold  and 
so  on.  Things  are  truly  what  they  do,  in  popular 
and  scientific  opinion.  But  does  this  not  mean  that 
they  are  reflected,  in  some  manner,  in  their  effects  ? 
And  does  this  not  make  invalid  your  analogy  be- 
tween percepts  and  a  bookkeeper's  accounts  ? 
Mental  signs  are  the  effects  of  the  very  things  to 
which  they  can  be  made  to  refer,  whereas  arithmet- 
ical characters  and  devices  of  entry  in  bookkeeping 
are  inventions  of  a  person  who  is  only  in  the  slight- 
est degree  conceivable,  an  effect  of  the  merchandise 
whose  movements  he  records  with  his  symbols." 

"Another  point,"  the  sorcerer  continued.  *'  Hav- 
ing overlooked  the  peculiar  virtues  of  'moving 
pictures,'  you  add  confusion  to  your  error  by  talk- 
ing about . pictures  as  'replicas'  or  'duplicates.' 
And  by  showing  the  absurdity  of  '  mental  reduplica- 
tion,' you  fancy  you  have  shattered  the  ordinary 
man's  faith  in  world-pictures.  You  convince  me 
more  firmly  than  ever  that  philosophers  should 
give  more  attention  to  pictures.  It  was  not  I 
nor  my  fellow- believers  who  started  this  rumor 
about  mental  pictures  being  replicas  of  external 
things.  We  mean  by  pictures  just  what  every 
ordinary  man  and  every  artist  does ;  something 
that  presents  an  aspect  of  another;  or,  to  avoid 
philosophical  disputes,  a  presented  aspect  of  a  thing. 
I  have  never  seen  a  picture  in  any  gallery  that  pre- 


212  WORLD-PICTURES 

tended  to  be  a  replica  of  the  thing  it  portrayed. 
One  picture  may  be  a  repHca  of  another ;  but  this 
means  that  it  presents  the  same  aspect  of  the  por- 
trayed thing  as  the  other  picture  does.  Some 
wicked  sophist  has  confused  most  inartistically  du- 
pHcates,  models,  and  pictures.  And  he  has  thereby 
done  violence  to  the  English  language  and,  still 
more  disastrously,  perturbed  the  ponderings  of 
philosophers  far  and  near.  A  duplicate,  as  any 
dictionary  will  tell  you,  is  an  exact  counterpart  of  its 
original ;  we  may  speak  of  an  inaccurate  copy,  but 
never  of  an  inaccurate  duplicate.  In  daily  speech, 
we  might  call  one  coin  the  duplicate  of  another  of 
the  same  minting;  but  when  talking  philosophy, 
we  must  deny  that  any  two  material  objects  can 
possibly  be  true  duplicates.  There  are  always 
some  differences,  if  not  in  molecular  structure  then 
surely  in  the  stresses  and  strains  due  to  different 
spatial  position  with  relation  to  other  objects. 
Taking  this  strict  interpretation,  who  could  be  so 
foolish  as  to  suppose  that  the  things  in  mind  are 
duplicates  of  any  external  originals  ?  Remember, 
furthermore,  that  a  duplicate  is  not  a  copy  merely 
in  appearancey  but  also  '  in  substance  and  in  effect,* 
as  the  dictionary  says.  Thus,  a  document  looking 
precisely  like  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is 
a  copy  or  facsimile  of  that  document ;  but  it  is  not 
a  duplicate,  because  it  is  not  a  statement  of  rights 
and  intentions  of  a  body  of  men  identical  with  the 
signers  of   the  Declaration  of  Independence;    it 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      213 

does  not  disturb  the  equanimity  of  our  English 
cousins,  it  has  not  the  history  nor  the  sentimental 
value  of  the  immortal  brief.  Look  to  the  law,  my 
friends,  for  light.  You  will  find  this  distinction 
between  copy  and  duplicate  is  sharp  and  worth 
preserving  in  our  discussions.  Speak  of  mental 
pictures  as  duplicates,  and  the  absurdity  of  the  name 
appears  at  once  in  nearly  every  case.  My  thought 
of  a  cow  is  not  identical  with  the  cow  thought 
of  *in  substance  and  effect.' 

"Nor,'*  continued  the  sorcerer,  "can  we  speak 
of  world  models.  For  a  model  means  an  object, 
usually  in  miniature,  representing  accurately  the 
structure,  rather  than  the  outward  appearance,  of 
its  original.  A  model  can,  to  be  sure,  look  like 
its  original  in  many  respects ;  but  this  is  not  always 
necessary ;  neither  need  a  model  function  precisely 
like  its  original ;  the  formal  arrangement  and  con- 
nection of  parts  is  the  essential  feature.  I  speak 
now,  you  understand,  of  models  in  the  sense  used 
by  engineers  and  draughtsmen.  You  will  surely 
agree  with  me  that  our  experiences  are  not  mechan- 
ical models  at  all ;  for  the  blue  I  see  in  the  sky  is 
not  a  pattern  of  the  molecular  arrangement  of  the 
air  and  the  nerves  involved  in  giving  me  that  blue 
sensation.  If  it  is  impossible  to  call  our  experi- 
ences models  of  external  things,  there  is  a  little 
danger  in  describing  them  as  plans;  I  hesitate  to 
use  this  term  generally.  It  is  confusing.  A  plan, 
being  something  which  shows  the  parts  of  an  object 


214  WORLD-PICTURES 

in  their  proportions  and  relations,  does  not  give 
the  appearance  of  the  planned  object,  but  only 
a  certain  indirect  indication  of  its  structure,  as 
the  latter  is  known  to  be  through  a  large  series  of 
measurements,  taken  at  various  times  in  different 
ways.  A  plan,  we  might  say  safely,  gives  the  ap- 
pearance of  an  object  only  to  a  person  who  knows 
the  rules  of  the  draughtsman  and  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  thing  he  patterns.  In  experience.  Na- 
ture is  somehow  her  own  draughtsman;  but  she 
does  not  follow  a  cut-and-dried  rule  of  draughting, 
as  the  architects  and  engineers  do  in  their  work. 
The  latter  occasionally  make  perspective  plans  as 
well  as  projective  ones ;  but  they  never  go  far  be- 
yond these  two  types ;  experiences,  however,  re- 
veal not  only  the  geometrical  relations  and  structure 
of  external  objects  but  their  motions,  effects,  inter- 
actions, and  a  thousand  and  one  other  peculiarities. 
For  this  reason,  the  word  *plan'  strikes  me  as 
much  too  narrow;  aside  from  this,  too,  there  is 
the  well-known  ambiguity  of  the  word,  which 
sometimes  misleads  thinkers  into  the  fancy  that 
experience  reveals  a  *plan  '  —  i.  e.,  a  design  or  pur- 
pose —  of  the  universe.  Whether  there  is  such 
a  design  or  not,  I  do  not  know;  but  I  am  sure 
that  no  mere  analysis  of  the  nature  of  experience 
will  reveal  one." 

"But!"  exclaimed  a  philosopher  in  the  rear  of 
the  crowd,  "you  surely  recognize  at  least  personal 
designs  in  all  ideas  and  theories  ?  " 


WALTER   BOUGHTON  PITKIN      215 

"Of  course  our  wishes  decide  what  goes  into 
some  of  our  world-pictures.  And  we  plan  later 
pictures  so  as  to  harmonize  as  well  as  possible  with 
earlier  ones.  But  this  proves  nothing  about  cosmic 
aspirations." 

"Perhaps  not,"  a  logician  interrupted.  "But 
it  does  demonstrate  the  nonsense  of  world-pictures. 
The  scientists'  plan  of  molecular  structures  is  no 
more  a  true  picture  of  matter  than  a  hungry  man*s 
craving  for  meat  is  a  photograph  of  a  sirloin.  Out 
of  your  own  mouth  you  have  made  your  pictures 
simply  convenient  plans  of  action,  tools  of  thought 
which  serve  only  to  help  you  get  along  in  life.  Fre- 
quently you  change  your  mind,  get  weary  of  old 
theories,  and  make  new  ones ;  sometimes  because 
new  discoveries  force  your  hand,  again  for  sheer  love 
of  mental  gymnastics.  Are  these  creations,  in  which 
personal  impulses  are  mixed  thickly,  representa- 
tions of  anything  save  your  own  sweet  will .?" 

"  Surely !  You  speak  as  though  my  purposes 
were  somehow  painted  in  my  world- pictures.  As 
though  the  purpose  of  an  artist  who  painted  a  moun- 
tain from  the  southeast  at  a  distance  of  one  mile 
from  its  base  during  early  April  mornings  neces- 
sarily made  all  resemblance  between  canvas  and 
mountain  impossible  !  Do  you  not  see  that,  out  of 
thousands  and  even  millions  of  aspects  of  a  given 
object,  the  man  with  a  purpose  simply  selects  those 
that  suit  him  ?  And,  unless  he  is  dehberately  trying 
to  play  with  the  object,  as  a  poet  playing  with  horses 


216  WORLD-PICTURES 

and  men  in  fancy  evolves  a  centaur,  he  does  not 
wantonly  add  to  the  scene  any  marring  evidence 
of  his  purpose.  But  let  us  suppose  his  selection 
of  aspects  is  very  unusual ;  does  his  curious  purpose 
prevent  men  from  grasping  his  picture  as  a  genuine 
representation  ? 

"Consider  your  own  attitude  toward  any  ordi- 
nary picture ;  when  you  stand  before  a  landscape 
by  Corot,  do  you  fail  to  base  your  appreciation 
of  the  curious  lights  and  the  charming  vagueness 
of  even  the  grosser  details  upon  your  real  or  as- 
sumed knowledge  of  the  artist's  purpose?  Do 
you  say :  *  This  is  no  picture  at  all,  because  Corot 
has  omitted  thousands  of  minor  lights  and  shad- 
ows and  has  heightened,  out  of  his  imagination, 
certain  dominant  tones  in  the  scene,  which  a  spec- 
tral analysis  of  the  lights  he  actually  saw  in  the  por- 
trayed landscape  would  never  reveal  ? '  No,  you 
judge  his  work  from  his  own  standpoint,  as  nearly 
as  you  can.  You  put  yourself  in  the  place  of  a 
man  whose  purpose  is  to  bring  out  certain  airy, 
romantic  aspects  of  ordinary  sunlight  which  men 
usually  feel  but  cannot  abstract  from  other  pecul- 
iarities, such  as  sheer  brilliancy  and  color ;  the  place 
of  a  man  who  is  trying  to  show  masses  of  light 
rather  than  the  details  of  things  that  are  in  the  light. 
And  you  say,  if  you  have  any  appreciation  for  this 
standpoint,  that  the  picture  is  a  wonderfully  '  true  * 
reproduction  of  the  real  landscape. 

"So  too  with  the  physicist's  picture  of  molecules. 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      217 

It  is  a  plan  of  action,  to  be  sure ;  but  only  because 
it  is  supposed  to  portray  the  nature  of  the  matter 
the  scientist  deals  with  from  the  particular  stand- 
point he  wishes  to  take.  Wishing  to  describe  the 
behavior  of  material  objects  in  mathematical 
terms,  he  looks  at  his  data  so  as  to  bring  the  de- 
sired aspects  into  the  foreground.  But  look  how 
some  turn  this  fact.  They  say  that,  because  the 
scientist  thinks  out  molecules  from  the  point  of 
view  of  their  use  in  interpreting  certain  phenomena, 
therefore  these  entities  and  their  determinations, 
however  definitely  conceived,  should  not  be  held 
for  literally  real.  It  is  as  if  they  existed ;  but  in 
reality  they  are  only  artificial  short-cuts  for  taking 
us  from  one  part  to  another  of  experience's  flux. 
They  are  only  'extraordinarily  successful  hypoth- 
eses.' If  these  men  had  only  studied  the  rudiments 
of  art,  how  easily  they  might  have  avoided  this  fal- 
lacy !  They  have  failed  wholly  to  see  that,  bound 
up  inextricably  with  the  very  function  and  nature 
of  a  picture,  is  the  selection  of  a  standpoint;  and 
with  a  standpoint  goes  an  angle  and  an  'atmos- 
phere '  and,  at  least  in  the  case  of  humanly  devised 
pictures,  among  which  it  is  fair  to  reckon  our  idea 
of  molecules,  the  '  medium  of  expression '  —  the 
paints,  brushes,  and  canvas,  or  again  the  words, 
signs,  and  formulas.  They  do  not  see  the  useless- 
ness  of  refuting  the  picture  theory  of  knowledge 
by  trying  to  load  impossible  and  unheard-of 
responsibilities   on   our   poor   pictures." 


218  WORLD-PICTURES 

"Is  matter  really  composed  of  molecules  and 
atoms  or  not?  "  an  untutored  mind  inquired 
timidly  of  the  sorcerer. 

"It  is  really  molecular  and  atomic,  just  as  the 
sky  you  see  overhead  is  really  blue.  For  what  do 
you  mean  in  each  case  ?  When  you  say  the  sky  is 
blue  do  you  signify  that  a  man  in  a  balloon  ten 
miles  up  in  the  air  might  find  tiny  particles  of  mat- 
ter which,  under  a  sufiiciently  strong  microscope, 
would  appear  blue  precisely  as  the  sky  does  as  a 
whole  to  you  from  your  present  vantage  point  .'^'* 

"No.  I  mean  that  the  sky  is  really  of  such  a 
nature  that  its  appearance  from  certain  positions 
and  under  certain  conditions  of  light  is  blue.'* 

"  In  short,  the  real  nature  of  the  sky  is  not  some- 
thing we  can  talk  intelligently  about  *in  general,* 
but  must  always  be  considered  and  judged  from  a 
specific  standpoint  and  under  specific  conditions  ?** 

"I  should  say  so.  I  cannot  imagine  what  a  sky 
in  general  would  be." 

"Why!**  exclaimed  another  untutored  mind, 
with  much  disappointment,  "then  molecules  are 
only  appearances,  after  all !  Matter  simply  looks 
like  a  molecular  order  from  the  physicist's  stand- 
point at  present.  A  nearer  view  under  better 
conditions  of  observation  may  prove  this  hypoth- 
esis false.  And  then  everybody  will  agree  that 
all  chemistry  has  rested  upon  a  mere  appearance 
for  generations !  Verily,  we  are  such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  of!'* 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      219 

"Cheer  up!"  cried  the  sorcerer  merrily.  "You 
are  eating  bread  and  pretending  it  is  a  stone.  You 
are  letting  the  metaphysicians  confuse  you  with 
their  vicious  identification  of  'mere  appearances' 
and  real  aspects.  Of  course,  the  material  world 
presents  itself  from  certain  angles  and  under  cer- 
tain conditions  as  being  composed  of  molecules, 
atoms,  corpuscles,  and  may  be  something  even 
finer.  Of  course,  men's  notions  about  these  con- 
stituent parts  are  constantly  changing  with  the 
growth  of  knowledge.  But  so  is  the  view  of  a  moun- 
tain as  you  slowly  approach  the  earth  monster  from 
a  distance.  If  you  say  in  ordinary  common-sense 
life  that  each  view  of  the  mountain  gave  you  a  real 
aspect  of  it,  not  a  mere  conjecture  or  illusion  about 
it,  why  not  be  equally  unsophisticated  when  talking 
about  views  gained  reflectively  ?  By  what  right  do 
you  refuse  to  call  a  picture  taken  at  a  distance  with 
a  poor  lens  less  truly  a  picture  than  one  taken  at 
short  range  with  a  finer  camera.^" 

A  biologist  spoke  for  the  untutored  mind.  "I 
refuse  to  call  an  error  a  representation  of  the 
thing  it  erroneously  refers  to.  The  blue  sensed  by 
the  ordinary  man  when  he  looks  up  at  the  sky  is 
construed  by  him  as  a  picture  of  the  upper  atmos- 
phere and  nothing  else.  Yet  we  know  the  color 
is  really  a  curious  mental  expression  of  a  vastly 
complex  interaction  of  air,  ether,  and  nerves.  As 
well  call  a  picture  of  me  one  of  you  because  you 
happened  to  be  a  party  in  its  making !" 


220  WORLD-PICTURES 

"Would  you  say,"  the  sorcerer  retorted  impa- 
tiently, "that  a  canvas  whose  figures,  coloring,  and 
general  purport  you  could  not  interpret  at  first 
glance  was  not  truly  a  picture  of  anything  ?  Or 
would  you  pronounce  a  photograph  of  some  scene 
a  pure  illusion  if  you  had  mistaken  it  for  a  repre- 
sentation of  some  other  scene  ?  It  seems  to  me 
that  no  specific  error,  however  gross,  supplies  us 
with  the  slightest  evidence  against  the  picture 
theory;  indeed,  I  am  not  sure  but  that  the  very 
attempt  to  base  an  epistemological  doctrine  of 
either  subjectivism  or  symbolism  upon  the  char- 
acter of  perceptual  error  must  subtly  assume  some 
pictorial  function  in  experience.  For  one  percep- 
tion or  thought  can  claim  superiority  over  another 
only  by  proving  through  practical  tests  that  its 
own  specific  nature  more  adequately  expresses  the 
nature  of  the  situation  of  which  it  claims  to  be  an 
aspect." 

"But  how  about  cases  of  complete  error?" 
asked  a  psychologist  impatiently.  "Do  you  say 
that  the  seen  blue  is  whatever  it  comes  to  mean  ?  " 

"  I  think  I  am  forced  to  this ;  but  do  not  miscon- 
strue the  facts !" 

"  Good  !  Then  a  neurotic  cloth  merchant  might 
interpret  the  blue  as  a  huge  silken  canvas  stretched 
over  his  diseased  universe.  A  color-blind  barba- 
rian, unable  to  distinguish  it  from  yellow,  might 
call  it  a  cloud  of  gold  dust  in  the  heavens.  A 
child  might  think  it  a  sea  of  water.     And  so  on 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN     221 

through  a  thousand  vagaries.  Now,  do  you  really 
mean  to  say  that  this  one  identical  blue  is  at  one 
and  the  same  time  a  true  aspect  of  a  cosmic  sheet 
of  silk,  an  aureal  mist,  a  suspended  ocean,  and 
all  the  other  fancied  objects  to  which  it  is  at- 
tached by  raw  or  sickly  minds?" 

*'  Exactly  !  Under  the  special  conditions  of  each 
case,  the  simple  color  whose  character  may  be 
proved  by  proper  experiment  to  be  given  by  the 
illumined  atmosphere  acts  so  as  to  mean  or  look 
like  some  curious  thing.  But  the  factors  deter- 
mining the  interpretation  or  *  acquired  meaning' 
of  blue  from  moment  to  moment  are  obviously  not 
identical  "^dth  the  factors  bringing  into  existence 
the  simple  blue  itself,  any  more  than  the  causes  of 
a  photograph  are  identical  with  the  causes  of  a 
man's  thoughts  about  the  latter.  So,  you  see,  I 
am  quite  prepared  to  admit  that  things  are  pic- 
tured which  exist  as  pictured  only  under  unusual 
cerebral  conditions." 

"But,"  said  the  physicist,  "you  have  pointed 
out  such  a  radical  difference  between  ordinary 
pictures  and  cognitive  experiences  that  I  for  one 
object  to  your  calling  the  latter  world- pictures. 
You  say  the  blue  I  sense  is,  in  some  measure,  an 
effect  of  the  sky  to  which  I  come  to  refer  it ;  so  too 
is  the  act  of  interpreting  the  color  one  effect  of 
the  color  itself.  You  thus  make  the  experience, 
in  all  its  stages  of  development,  a  phase  of  a  real, 
more  than  empirical  thing  or  complex.    It  is  not  a 


222  WORLD-PICTURES 

copy,  it  is  an  aspect  of  the  thing  itself.  Is  it  not 
doing  violence  to  language  to  call  a  part  of  an  ob- 
ject a  picture  of  the  object?  I  am  willing  to  con- 
cede that  experiences  may  not  be  bald  symbols, 
for  you  have  convinced  me  that  they  are  closely 
related  in  nature  and  behavior  to  the  whole  order 
of  things  to  which  they  refer  and  through  which 
they  guide  us ;  yet  I  cannot  call  them  pictures.  I 
am  willing  to  compromise,  however,  by  calHng 
them  aspects." 

To  this  the  sorcerer  replied :  "  I  was  long  in 
doubt  over  this  same  question  of  terminology.  It 
is  true  that  men  ordinarily  think  of  a  picture  as  a 
wholly  external,  independent  representation.  But 
is  this  not  merely  a  practical  abstraction  ?  As  a 
scientist  and  philosopher,  would  you  not  admit 
that  even  the  most  imaginative  painting  or  trick 
photograph  is  an  aspect  of  what  it  portrays,  just  in 
so  far  as  the  latter  has  influenced  the  artist  to  copy 
it  or  the  spectator  of  the  picture  to  interpret  it.?'* 

"You  mean,'*  inquired  somebody,  "that,  philo- 
sophically speaking,  even  a  word  picture,  say  a 
description  of  a  battle,  is  truly  a  phase  of  the  battle, 
just  as  is  the  din  of  arms  that  strikes  the  ear  of  the 
soldier  at  the  front?" 

"Precisely.  Such  a  description  may  even  be  a 
more  significant  aspect  and  part  of  the  sanguinary 
event  than  many  less  remote  phases  of  it  are.  It  is 
not  poetry  but  strict  scientific  fact  to  say  that  a 
picture  is  an  aspect  determined  merely  by  a  more 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN     223 

complex  set  of  relations  than  the  commoner  aspects 
are.  A  landscape  in  oil  before  me  has  had  to  work 
its  way  farther  and  more  laboriously  through  vari- 
ous media  than  would  the  original  scene.  All  the 
intricacies  of  a  sensitive,  selective  human  organ- 
ism interpose  to  modify  and  transform  the  former 
in  a  thousand  different  ways;  and  then  there  are 
all  the  influences  of  paints  and  brushes  likewise 
working  to  make  the  more  '  artificial '  aspect  differ- 
ent from  the  simple  perception  of  trees  and  mead- 
ows separated  from  the  eye  only  by  a  span  of  lighted 
air.  When  I  consider  all  this,  the  difference  be- 
tween pictures  and  aspects  appears  to  be  only  a 
relative  one,  adapted  to  many  practical  ends,  no 
doubt,  but  not  suited  to  epistemological  purposes.** 

"At  any  rate,"  insisted  the  physicist,  "you  rob 
the  word  'picture'  of  all  its  natural  meaning  by 
making  representations  really,  in  the  broadest 
sense,  pictures  of  absolutely  everything  contribut- 
ing to  their  production:  Rembrandt's  portrait  of 
himself  is,  to  you,  also  a  portrait  of  the  brushes  he 
painted  the  canvas  with.  Is  this  not  the  rankest 
quibbling?" 

"Such  extreme  cases  do  make  my  theory  sound 
absurd.  And  yet,  remembering  that  the  specific 
pictorial  function  of  anything  depends  directly 
upon  the  character  of  the  spectator's  knowledge, 
and  hence  upon  the  attitude  the  spectator  can  and 
does  take  toward  the  perceived  thing,  I  cheerfully 
grant  your  interpretation.    I  cannot  think  it  a  mere 


224  WORLD-PICTURES 

figure  of  speech  to  say  that  a  mind  deeply  versed 
in  technique  might  find  in  the  disposition  of  paint 
on  Rembrandt's  canvas  a  representation  of  the 
master's  brushes  quite  as  distinctly  pictorial  as  is 
the  splash  of  gray  which  we  call  a  cloud  in  a 
painted  landscape." 

After  a  pause  in  which  the  learned  men  and 
some  of  the  sorcerer's  deluded  followers  com- 
mented on  these  words  of  the  teacher,  the  physicist 
found  an  opportunity  to  speak  again. 

"You  have  almost  won  me  over,"  he  confessed. 
"But  one  more  question  which  interests  me  as  a 
student  of  matter.  You  say  our  experiences  may 
be  aspects  or  phases  of  real  objects.  You  mean, 
then,  that  trees  and  stars  actually  get  into  our 
minds .?" 

"Yes,  but  not  as  a  rat  crawls  into  a  hole.  I 
hear  some  crying  *Topsy-turvydom !'  They  cry 
this  only  because  they  think  I  imply  that  an  ob- 
ject is  the  same  wherever  it  is.  If  a  thing  is  defined 
as  what  it  does,  it  must  be  located  wherever  it  acts ; 
but  this  does  not  mean  that  its  nature  and  powers 
are  the  same  at  every  point  in  its  whole  *  sphere  of 
influence.'  A  dog  is  both  at  his  tail  and  his  nose, 
yet  he  is  different  at  each  point.  If  you  want  to 
worry  yourselves  into  a  madhouse  trying  to  explain 
how  the  same  thing  can  be  different,  do  so  for  all 
me  !  But  I  have  no  taste  for  the  game.  This  same 
'differentiation  and  specialization,'  so  familiar 
to  us  all  in  organic  life,  appears  in  every  object 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN     225 

as  soon  as  we  define  things  in  the  broadest,  most 
inclusive  manner.  The  colors  I  see,  the  heat  I 
feel,  the  sounds  I  hear  from  moment  to  moment, 
the  joy  that  stirs  me,  these  are  all  proved  by 
physiology  and  psychology  to  be  manifestations 
of  real  things  or  systems  of  things.  Now,  whether 
or  not  all  influences  emanate  from  certain  spatial 
centres  we  need  not  trouble  to  decide  just  now.  It 
is  enough  to  say  that  those  things  in  space  which 
can  be  connected  with  these  mental  things  are  most 
conveniently  regarded  as  the  '  true '  centres  of  influ- 
ence. Thus,  speaking  exactly,  we  may  say  that 
the  sun  itself  gets  into  consciousness,  provided  we 
do  not  identify  the  whole  star  with  the  mass  of  gas 
at  the  centre  of  our  planet's  orbit.  The  sun  ex- 
tends far  beyond  its  outermost  fringe  of  quivering 
molecules,  out  into  the  most  distant  and  unimag- 
ined  abysses  of  the  universe,  wherever  its  ether 
disturbances  reach.  Only  a  series  of  practical 
abstractions  has  led  men  to  narrow  its  bournes  to 
the  central  fire;  the  crude  animism  of  the  savage 
who  thinks  of  the  sun  as  reaching  down  from  the 
heavens,  caressing  the  flowers,  stinging  men  with 
its  heat,  and  summoning  the  mists  out  of  ponds  is 
far  better  philosophy  than  the  over-refined  dis- 
sections of  the  metaphysician  who  writes  thick, 
foolish  volumes  trying  to  explain  how  a  ball  of 
incandescent  gas  ninety-five  million  miles  away 
can  become  an  object  of  knowledge  at  a  point 
where  it  is  absent." 

15 


226  WORLD-PICTURES 

"Or  how  a  mental  sun  can  get  ninety-five 
million  miles  away  from  its  parent  brain!"  inter- 
jected a  sorrowful  youth  who  had  taken  a  course 
in  psychology. 

"But  both  the  savage  and  the  philosopher  com- 
monly make  the  same  mistake  of  interpretation; 
the  philosopher  does  so  deliberately  at  the  outset, 
the  barbarian  comes  to  it  innocently.  I  refer 
to  the  error  that  the  whole  nature  or  *  essence'  of 
the  sun  is  present  in  every  act  of  the  sun;  that, 
for  instance,  when  the  sun  is  in  somebody's  mind, 
it  is  there  in  precisely  the  same  sense  as  it  is  in 
the  heavens.  This  notion  makes  the  savage  call 
his  dreams  the  spirits  of  the  things  dreamed  of; 
but  it  prevents  the  over- cautious  metaphysician 
from  believing  that  the  *real'  sun  can  possibly  be 
known.  While  the  savage  is  the  victim  of  his  own 
imagination,  as  a  result,  the  metaphysician  is  only 
too  frequently  led  to  call  knowledge  *epiphenom- 
enal,'  'purely  ideal,'  or  by  way  of  compromise  with 
the  overwhelming  evidences  of  realism  in  daily 
life,  *a  symbolic  function.'  I  respect  the  savage's 
error,  but  think  the  philosopher's  unpardonable." 

"Your  philosophy,"  interjected  a  logician,  "may 
be  sound  for  aught  I  know ;  but  it  forces  upon  you 
a  weird  definition  of  a  *  thing.'  Every  discernible, 
or  if  you  will,  every  real,  must  be  defined  in  terms 
of  and  identified  with  its  activity,  or,  more  broadly, 
with  the  part  it  plays  in  the  whole  scheme  of  things. 
As  all  things  known  to  man  are  found  only  in  highly 


WALTER   BOUGHTON   PITKIN      227 

complex  interaction,  it  follows  that  for  philosophi- 
cal purposes  each  thing  must  be  defined  in  terms 
of  the  influence  it  exerts  in  all  situations  wherein 
it  is  involved.  Every  definition  founded  upon  any- 
thing less  is  abstract,  partial,  and  at  best  only 
adapted  to  special  practical  purposes." 

"Precisely,"  the  sorcerer  acquiesced.  "As  any 
practical  man  would  say,  my  definition  of  a  thing 
is  good  for  nothing  in  particular  !  But  this  seeming 
reproach  does  not  distress  me,  inasmuch  as  episte- 
mological  dictum  is  not  supposed  to  serve  any  end 
commonly  called  practical." 

"Rank  Relativism!"  somebody  muttered.  The 
sun  is  really  green  because  colored  glasses  make 
it  appear  so !  Anything  is  anything  that  any- 
body can  imagine  it  to  be !  Reality  is  nothing 
more  than  formless  potentiality,  mere  vXry,  to  be 
moulded  by  mind." 

"That  last  remark  is  utterly  false!"  returned 
the  sorcerer  warmly.  "Such  a  conclusion  is  possi- 
ble only  by  assuming  what  I  expressly  refuse  to, 
namely,  that  things  are  nothing  but  their  appear- 
ances. The  character  of  appearances  is  deter- 
mined largely  by  many  things  not  appearing.  So 
far  as  my  little  fancy  about  world- pictures  is  con- 
cerned, the  whole  structure  of  the  universe  may 
have  been  foreordained,  or  on  the  other  hand  it 
may  be  still  in  the  making.  With  nothing  save  a 
theory  of  experience  to  guide  us,  I  do  not  see  how 
this  question  is  soluble;    and  for  the  purposes  of 


228  WORLD-PICTURES 

epistemology,  it  is  irrelevant.  But  Reality  surely 
is  not  vkr}.'* 

"And  yet,"  interjected  a  bystander,  "you  say 
we  make  our  world-pictures.  We  pick  up  colors 
and  noises  and  work  them  up  into  all  manners  of 
theories,  whims,  and  plans." 

**  True,"  the  sorcerer  returned.  "  But  this  is  only 
one  aspect  of  the  knowledge  process.  There  is 
another  equally  important  one.  Reals  get  into 
consciousness,  and  the  reals  getting  in  are  world- 
pictures,  representing  part  of  the  nature  of  Reality. 
The  notion  that  two  incompatible  theories  are  here 
thrown  together  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  knowl- 
edge relation  may  be,  but  usually  is  not,  considered, 
like  every  other  relation,  from  the  standpoint  of 
any  of  the  objects  or  factors  involved  in  the  rela- 
tion. Remember  that  all  factors  contribute  in 
some  manner  to  determine  the  result.  Looking 
at  knowledge  from  the  standpoint  of  the  things  that 
succeed  in  forcing  themselves  into  knowledge,  I 
should  say  without  fear  that  the  objects  have  *made 
themselves  known,*  —  that  is,  have  developed  em- 
pirical parts  or  phases.  Looking  at  the  same  pro- 
cedure, though,  from  the  standpoint  of  all  the 
other  factors  involved  in  producing  and  interpreting 
the  simple  experiences  which  come  to  be  known 
as  aspects  of  reals,  I  think  it  fair  to  say  that 
*  predispositions,*  *  purposes,*  and  'associations*  in- 
terpret the  instreaming  characters,  making  them 
mean  aspects  of  particular  reals.     But  if  this  is 


WALTER  BOUGHTON  PITKIN      229 

a  mystery  to  you,  I  beg  you  to  think  it  over  at 
leisure.  For  fast  debate  solves  no  puzzles  but  only 
arouses  thought." 

"You  have  uttered  many  true  words,"  said  the 
physicist  in  behalf  of  the  learned  men,  *'  but  we 
still  suspect  that  you  have  dazzled  us  with  subtle 
analogies.  Our  logicians,  though,  refuse  to  let  us 
continue  the  argument  by  attacking  your  use  of 
poetic  comparisons,  for  they  are  of  the  opinion  that 
perhaps  all  reasoning  is  based  upon  just  this  sort 
of  analogy  with  which  you  have  been  interesting 
us.  Rest  assured,  though,  that  in  due  season  we 
shall  return  to  this  debate.  Then,  perhaps,  the 
outcome  will  be  decisive." 

This  happened  long  ago.  The  learned  men 
have  not  yet  come  back  to  the  market-place 
where  the  throngs  of  untutored  minds  still  talk 
in  the  tongue  of  the  sorcerers.  And  nobody  knows 
why  the  conversation  has  never  been  resumed. 
For  all  those  who  heard  the  debate  said  that  many 
things  remained  to  be  spoken  on  both  sides.  But 
perhaps  the  disputants  have  found  too  many  more 
important  things  to  do. 


NAIVE  REALISM:    WHAT  IS  IT? 


NAIVE  REALISM;    WHAT  IS  IT? 

By  Dickinson  S.  Milleb 

I 

\j¥  the  most  recent  tendencies  to  be  observed 
here  and  there  in  metaphysical  speculation  there 
is  one  at  least  clearly  healthy  and  hopeful,  the 
impulse  to  return  to  "naive  realism."  A  feeling 
has  arisen  amongst  certain  philosophers  akin  to 
what  the  cultivated  world  without  has  long  felt 
about  the  whole  industry  of  their  class,  an  im- 
patience of  the  extravagance  of  theory  that  marks 
the  most  irresponsible  of  the  sciences,  and  has 
marked  it  not  least  in  the  last  century;  a  sense 
that  though  ingenuity  and  speculative  enterprise 
and  architectural  instinct  and  the  taste  for  sweep- 
ing views  are  at  their  strongest  there,  not  so  much 
can  be  said  for  sanity  of  judgment  or  intellectual 
poise.  We  have  been  told,  for  instance,  that  Real- 
ity is  Obligation,  the  obligation  to  think  our  world 
in  a  certain  manner;  or  that  all  we  can  know  of 
it  is  that  it  is  not  like  Appearance,  the  world  our 
thoughts  inhabit;  or  that  it  is  all  energy,  or  all 
will,  or  all  idea;   just  as  in  objective  times  it  was 

all  fixe,  or  all  water,  or  all  air.     One  category- 
ass 


234  NAIVE   REALISM 

after  another  is  cast  up  before  the  attention  of  the 
time,  and  the  different  intellectual  appetites  seize 
upon  their  own.  This  is  so  in  its  measure  in  every 
science,  but  philosophy  has  the  longest  circuit  to 
make  before  it  must  face  the  facts  that  will  take 
no  denial ;  and  thus  there  is  room  for  the  army  of 
Privatdocenten  and  their  elders,  who  write  books  of 
which  the  first  part  consists  in  a  refutation  of  all 
previous  theories  and  the  second  in  setting  forth  the 
next  theory  that  the  subject  will  bear.  Philosophy 
is  gone  so  far  round  the  circuit  that  for  some  per- 
haps to  embrace  naive  realism  is  only  one  more  tour 
de  force;  but  for  others  it  is  to  renounce  the  splen- 
did follies  of  speculative  imagination,  and  return  to 
intellectual  seriousness. 

But  the  way  back  to  naive  realism  is  not  so  plain 
as  one  might  think.  Naive  realism  being  the  view 
natural  to  all  of  us  in  all  but  our  philosophic 
moments,  our  philosophy  should  find  it  close  at 
hand.  Yet  between  these  two  spots  on  our  own 
premises  the  way  is  apt  to  be  lost.  That  is  to  say, 
to  give  an  accurate  analysis  in  the  terms  of  philos- 
ophy, a  true  theoretic  rendering,  of  the  deliverance 
of  our  consciousness  about  the  external  world  is 
so  far  from  easy  that  the  chief  schools  of  philosophy 
differ  in  it,  so  far  as  they  attempt  it  at  all.  It  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  Berkeley  declared  himself 
at  one  with  the  plain  man  and  at  issue  only  with 
the  philosopher  "debauched  with  learning." 
Thereupon    Reid    and    his    successors,    treating 


DICKINSON   S.  JVHLLER  235 

Berkeley's  doctrine  as  preposterous,  and  taking 
little  note  of  this  particular  claim  of  his,  under- 
took to  vindicate  against  him  the  natural  realism 
of  the  human  mind.  Hume,  in  essential  sympathy 
with  Berkeley's  method  of  thinking,  disallowed 
his  claim  in  regard  to  the  plain  man,  and  gave  a 
new  account  of  the  plain  man's  notion,  which 
notion  he  admitted  however  to  be  unphilosophical. 
German  idealists  have  in  general  been  content  to 
leave  the  plain  man  behind;  yet  if  challenged 
they  too  would  mostly  have  said  that  they  had  no 
quarrel  with  his  notion.  In  Enghsh  philosophy 
again,  it  is  perhaps  not  always  remembered  that 
Mill's  resolution  of  matter  into  "permanent  possi- 
bilities of  sensation"  was  intended  as  psychology 
as  well  as  philosophy;  not  only  as  an  account  of 
the  facts,  but  as  an  analysis  of  our  instinctive 
view  of  them.  Clifford,  on  one  side  at  least  of 
his  theory,  has  the  same  intention.  Most  of  these 
philosophers,  then,  have  not  felt  that  they  were 
estranged  from  naive  realism  at  all.  It  has  been 
left  to  their  opponents  to  feel  it. 

Now  it  is  at  least  possible  that  to  fix  our  minds 
on  the  question  in  what  character  matter  naturally 
appears  to  us  may  forward  us  in  solving  the  prob- 
lem of  what  matter  is.  In  partial  measure  the 
former  question  is  considered:  metaphysicians 
study  the  perception  of  matter.  But  they  do  not 
with  an  equal  scrutiny  study  its  apperception. 
Of  course  we  cannot  do  the  latter  without  the 


236  NAIVE  REALISM 

former;  so  that  in  the  following  we  shall  be 
partly  on  thickly  trodden  ground  and  partly  on 
neighboring  ground  that  is  less  frequented.  Be 
it  remembered  that  whatever  profit  may  accrue 
to  our  metaphysics,  the  immediate  aim  here  is 
psychological,  the  analysis  of  an  instinctive 
conception. 

Consider  first  the  account  given  by  long-estab- 
lished realistic  systems  of  philosophy.  They  seem 
to  say  that  the  initial  blunder  of  the  idealist  is  in 
supposing  that  to  the  perceiver  consciousness  pre- 
sents merely  a  "content,"  an  opaque  wall  as  it 
were  with  a  painted  scene  upon  it.  Our  con- 
sciousness in  perception  is  not  a  mere  possession 
of  ours  whose  import  ends  in  itself;  it  is  con- 
sciousness of  something;  it  is  not  a  wall  but  a 
window;  through  it  we  look  out  upon  a  world 
beyond.  This,  they  say,  is  the  distinction  of  con- 
sciousness from  other  things,  the  unique  property 
that  makes  it  consciousness,  namely,  that  it  tells 
more  than  it  is.  The  things  beyond  are  not  pres- 
ent in  consciousness ;  they  are  present  to  it.  These 
correlative  prepositions  "of"  and  "to"  which  are 
so  fundamental  in  our  language  about  experience 
are  expressive  of  a  unique  relation.  That  there  is 
an  object  distinct  from  the  percept,  says  a  philoso- 
pher, "is  not  an  opinion  about  perception,  it  is 
the  opinion  of  the  perception  itself."  The  opinion 
may  be  wrong;  in  that  case  perception  is  illusion, 
and  the  naive  realist  is  duped. 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  237 

This  runs  smoothly  enough  in  metaphor  and 
colloquial  terms;  and  its  natural  ring  proves  that 
it  must  in  some  sense  or  measure  be  true  to  ex- 
perience.   But  in  what  sense  or  measure? 

1.  A  perception,  it  is  said,  professes  to  reveal 
a  distinct  object,  i.  e.,  it  makes  consciously  by  its 
very  nature  what  is  called  a  transubjective  refer- 
ence thereto.  That  the  perception  is  not  the 
object  is  part  of  the  perception's  deliverance;  it 
points  the  attention  on  to  the  object;  "not  unto 
us"  say  the  perceptions.  But  this  is  demonstrably 
false.  The  demonstration  is  psychological.  To 
distinguish  something  from  our  perception  we 
must  know  the  perception  as  such.  This  may 
mean  either  of  two  things.  It  may  mean  that 
the  perception  is  conscious  of  its  concrete  self  (if 
these  words  have  a  meaning)  and  distinguishes 
that  from  the  object.  But  a  glance  of  introspection 
shows  of  course  that  we  are  not  conscious  of  any 
perception  apart  from  the  object.  Or  the  theory 
may  mean  that  we  distinguish  the  object  from 
perception  in  general  or  from  consciousness  in 
general.  To  do  this  we  must  have  formed  an  idea 
of  consciousness  in  general  or  of  perception  in 
general,  and  a  distinct  idea;  and  that  "the  child, 
the  rustic,  and  the  savage"  have  not  done;  nay, 
the  financier,  the  general,  and  the  senator  have 
not  done  it;  only  the  psychologist  and  a  few 
others  have  really  made  the  attempt.  The  theory 
asks  that  every  man's  mind  should  in  every  min- 


238  NA'iVE  REALISM 

ute  do  what  philosophers  in  the  centuries  have 
not  yet  definitively  done:  distinguish  in  generic 
nature  between  object  and  perception.  Besides, 
if  introspection  shows  that  we  are  not  conscious 
of  the  concrete  perception  apart  from  the  object, 
it  shows  as  well  that  we  are  not  abstractly  think- 
ing of  its  nature  thus  apart.  A  conscious  tran- 
subjective  reference  does  not  then  arise  in  sense. 

2.  It  turns  out  that  "  a  conscious  transubjective 
reference  "  is  a  phrase  without  meaning.  To  say 
that  the  reference  of  a  mental  "content"  to  its  ob- 
ject is  contained  in  the  mental  "content"  is  a 
natural  warping  of  language,  but  it  is  a  confusion 
of  ideas.  One  existence  may  resemble  another,  but 
(by  the  force  of  the  terms)  it  cannot  contain  what 
is  truly  another,  and  if  it  contains  a  "sign"  or  "in- 
dication" of  it  we  must  remember  what  signs  and 
indications  are.  They  are  always  facts,  individual 
in  themselves,  which  lead  the  mind  to  another 
fact  because  they  are  associated  with  it.  A  pic- 
ture is  a  picture  of  sl  man  because,  it  being  like 
him  and  I  having  seen  him  before,  it  carries  my 
mind  straight  to  him.  A  flag  stands  for  a  coun- 
try's name  and  honor  because  being  long  coupled 
therewith  it  suggests  them  at  once.  But  a  flag  is 
a  piece  of  bunting  and  a  picture  is  canvas  and 
oils.  The  connection  is  made  in  my  mind,  which 
carries  between  the  two,  and  the  words  reference 
and  meaning  are  used  for  the  relation  thus  created. 
The  like  is  true  of  words  themselves  and  gestures, 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  239 

with  their  meanings.  The  meanings  are  associa- 
tions. Indication  never  lies  wholly  in  the  indi- 
cating thing;  it  is  a  function  of  that  thing,  the 
fact  that  the  thing  works  suggestively  through 
the  mechanism  of  the  mind.  This  suggests  a 
difficulty  to  be  sure  if  we  should  come  to  the 
case  of  a  man's  thought  of  other  men's  minds  or 
of  his  own  past  experience.  Indeed  the  chief 
argument  for  the  conscious  transubjective  refer- 
ence is  that  we  could  never  have  knowledge  or 
thought  beyond  our  mind  if  it  did  not  exist.  The 
argument  does  not  directly  try  to  make  this  kind 
of  reference  credible ;  it  is  an  argument  by  threat. 
But  I  am  not  denying  reference  at  large;  only 
self-reference,  or  conscious  reference,  a  reference 
which  is  not  only  a  logical  function  but  a  psycho- 
logical datum.  And  I  cannot  here  pass  beyond 
the  problems  of  perception. 

Wherein  then  is  this  realistic  account  true  to 
experience  ?  In  its  saying  that  in  perception  we 
recognize  that  the  object  is  external  to  ourselves. 
^ye  do  recognize  this;  at  least  we  are  always 
ready  in  perception  to  recognize  it  at  the  slightest 
need;  but  "external  to  ourselves"  does  not 
mean  external  to  our  consciousness  (as  has  often 
been  pointed  out)  but  external  to  our  bodies,  pri- 
marily, and,  secondarily,  distinct  from  our  feelings 
and  ideas. 

We  can  now  take  one  step  forward.  In  percep- 
tion we  recognize  an  object.     We  do  not  recog- 


240  NAlVE  REALISM 

nize  a  perception.  After  the  fact  two  rival  theories 
arise.  One  tells  us  that  the  object  was  really  to 
be  classed  as  a  "content  of  perception"  only.  The 
other  tells  us  it  was  a  fact  distinct  from  our  con- 
sciousness. Whichever  of  these  is  the  truth,  we 
did  not  know  it  at  the  time.  Now  by  naive  real- 
ism we  mean  the  attitude  of  the  ordinary  mind 
toward  the  external  world.  We  say,  then,  that, 
when  in  the  presence  oj  the  object,  naive  realism 
takes  up  with  neither  of  these  theories,  but  simply 
finds  an  object,  of  particular  quality  and  property ; 
the  objectivity  itself  being  resoluble  into  features 
of  this  quality  and  property;  such  as  independ- 
ence of  the  perceiver's  will,  location  in  space, 
membership  in  a  trusted  order  of  experience,  and 
the  rest. 

But  in  retrospect  (it  may  reasonably  be  asked) 
does  not  the  view  of  naive  realism  become  differ- 
ent? When  we  look  back  on  ourselves,  even  in 
irreflective  memory,  as  having  perceived  a  real 
object,  do  we  not  distinguish  the  object  from  our 
perception  ?  The  contemplation  of  our  past  selves 
as  perceivers,  however,  is  so  much  like  the  con- 
templation of  other  men  as  perceivers  that  the 
two  are  best  considered  together;  as  they  will  be 
presently. 

Turn  now  from  the  traditional  "realistic"  ac- 
count of  naive  realism  to  Berkeley's.  It  is  chiefly 
when  speaking  of  objects  while  they  are  per- 
ceived that  Berkeley  claims  the  support  of  the 


DICKINSON  S.  MILLER  241 

plain  man.  And  it  follows  from  what  has  just 
been  noted  that  at  least  the  plain  man  does  not 
contradict  him.  Berkeley  passes  beyond  the  plain 
man  in  classing  the  present  object  as  "idea," 
that  is,  content  of  consciousness,  because  imme- 
diately present.  The  plain  man  does  not  class 
it  metaphysically  at  all;  but  the  plain  man  does 
regard  it  as  immediately  present.  Hence  in  this 
large  department  of  the  subject  there  is  no  con- 
flict between  them.  I  think  this  will  be  recognized 
without  need  of  our  lingering  over  the  old  miscon- 
ception; namely,  that  Berkeley  somehow  took 
away  from  present  objects  their  substantiality  or 
their  objectivity.  Even  Professor  Paulsen,  to  be 
sure,  despite  his  idealism,  is  found  asserting  that 
unless  objects  have  something  apart  from  our 
consciousness  to  support  them  (psychic  life  of 
their  own,  he  would  say)  the  theory  becomes 
Illusionismus.  It  is  one  more  instance  of  a 
thinker  performing  an  analysis  and  then  shrink- 
ing from  the  conclusion,  slipping  back  into  the 
old  unanalytic  language  before  he  comes  to  record 
his  result.  Both  Berkeley  and  the  plain  man 
regard  the  present  object  as  really  there,  really 
placed  in  a  portion  of  the  space  that  appears; 
both  regard  it  as  outside  the  body  of  the  per- 
ceiver ;  both  regard  it  as  distinct  from  his  feelings 
and  his  ideas,  in  the  vernacular  sense  of  the 
latter  word. 


16 


242  NAIVE  REALISM 


II 


The  real  difficulty  in  reconciling  the  two  views 
appears  when  we  think  of  unperceived  objects. 
Here  also,  however,  Berkeley  will  admit  no  differ- 
ence. The  three  distinct  explanations  he  gives 
in  different  passages  of  what  the  unperceived 
object  really  consists  in  he  attributes  directly  or 
implicitly  to  the  plain  man  as  being  his  theory 
also.  In  these  explanations,  briefly  given,  we 
can  see  the  germs  of  ideas  that  have  figured  con- 
spicuously in  the  subsequent  history  of  philosophy. 
Let  us  look  at  them  first  as  he  offers  them,  though 
it  will  be  convenient  to  take  them  in  a  different 
order  from  that  in  which  they  are  found  scattered 
in  his  writing. 

First,  the  absent  object  exists  because,  though 
I  do  not  perceive  it,  I  think  of  it.  It  has  the  same 
claim  to  reality  as  a  perception,  being  like  that 
an  "idea,"  a  content  of  consciousness.  Second, 
the  absent  object,  indeed  the  whole  material  uni- 
verse, exists  as  an  idea  in  the  mind  of  God.  Third, 
the  absent  object  exists  in  the  sense  that  if  I  induce 
the  train  of  perceptions  called  going  to  the  spot, 
etc.,  I  should  perceive  it. 

The  flaw  in  the  first  is  that  it  affords  no  ground 
for  distinguishing,  as  naive  realism  distinguishes, 
between  false  thoughts  and  true  thoughts  about 
absent  objects.     The  flaw  in  the  second  is  that 


DICKINSON  S.  MILLER  243 

we  think  our  physical  world  simply,  and  not  as 
bound  in  unity  of  consciousness  with  the  subjec- 
tive background  of  a  divine  mind.  The  flaw  in 
the  third  is  that,  though  it  is  quite  true  that  we 
derive  our  materials  for  picturing  things  not  now 
perceived  solely  from  former  perceptions,  yet  when 
I  believe  they  exist  now  there  is  no  "if"  in  my 
belief. 

Yet  though  these  suggestions  so  plainly  fail  us 
as  Berkeley  put  them,  yet  they  are  susceptible  of 
such  development  that  we  shall  not  wholly  lose 
sight  of  them  again.  In  part  they  have  acquired 
this  development  in  the  course  of  subsequent 
thought,  though  not  always  with  direct  debt  to 
Berkeley.  Let  us  return  to  them  in  a  developed 
form. 

The  first  explanation  becomes  nothing  less  than 
one  phase  of  the  thought  of  Fichte,  of  which 
Professor  Windelband  in  his  early  volume  '' Pra- 
ludien,"  and  Professor  Rickert  in  *' Der  Gegen- 
stand  der  Erkenntniss^'  have  made  so  acute  and 
incisive  a  restatement.  The  distinction  to  them 
between  true  thoughts  and  false  lies  not  in  their 
relation  to  independent  outer  objects  which 
thoughts  are  called  on  to  resemble,  but  in  relation 
to  an  inflexible  law  which  they  are  called  on  to 
fulfil.  This  conception  in  Fichte  was  of  course  a 
pursuance  of  Kant's  description  of  the  outlying 
phenomenal  world  as  a  construction  "according 
to  rules,"  the  "lawful  context"  of  present  expe- 


244  NAIVE   REALISM 

rience.  Professor  Windelband  tells  us  in  his  re- 
markable speech  on  Kant  that  human  thought 
has  yielded  two  radically  different  conceptions  of 
that  in  which  the  essence  of  knowledge  lies,  the 
Greek  conception  and  the  German.  The  Greek 
still  dominates  most  of  the  world.  According  to 
it,  to  know  is  faithfully  to  picture  a  fact  distinct 
from  the  knowing.  According  to  the  German, 
of  which  it  was  the  genius  of  Kant  to  lay  the 
foundations,  to  know  is  to  feel  and  follow  an  obli- 
gation of  thought  as  such.  In  his  essay  on  Nor- 
men  und  Naturgesetze  he  points  out  that  there 
is  an  "ought"  equally  in  thinking,  in  acting,  and 
in  judging  of  beauty.  He  dismisses  metaphysics 
as  "em  Undingy"  which  frivolously  concerns  itself 
with  the  mythical  originals  of  our  thought;  and 
leaves  us  logic,  ethics,  and  aesthetics  as  the  three 
departments  of  philosophy,  all  mandatory  or 
normative.  To  which  Professor  Rickert  naturally 
adds  that  the  category  of  obligation,  as  compared 
with  that  of  being,  is  seen  to  be  prior  and 
profounder. 

In  this,  we  have  got  far  beyond  Berkeley. 
Berkeley  denied  a  transcendent  reference  as  re- 
gards present  things;  it  never  occurred  to  him  to 
deny  it  as  regards  other  spirits,  the  spirit  of  God, 
for  instance,  nor  yet  as  regards  the  object  or 
"ideas"  that  they  perceive.  It  is  the  esse  of  things 
that  is  percipi  —  the  things  of  sense.  Yet  we  have 
seen  how  the  idealist  tendency,  begun  in  that  lim- 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  245 

ited  field,  urged  occasionally  further  and  led  him 
to  drop  what  I  have  called  his  first  remark  about 
absent  objects  —  it  may  have  been  almost  inad- 
vertent —  that  the  unseen  fountain  existed,  since 
we  thought  of  it. 

Meanwhile  Fichte  and  his  followers  have  no 
trouble  about  unperceived  objects,  just  (they 
would  say)  as  the  naive  realist  has  no  trouble; 
though  they  go  further  than  he  in  theoretic  speci- 
fication, they  go  side  by  side  with  him  as  far  as 
he  goes.  Of  course  we  believe  in  the  outlying 
stretches  of  the  physical  world,  they  would  say; 
that  is  the  way  we  have  to  make  up  our  world  in 
consciousness.  The  perceived  object  is  sensory; 
the  unperceived  object  is  given  in  the  different 
stuff  of  idea;  but  they  are  both  given,  or  made, 
and  there  is  no  perplexity  about  one  that  there  is 
not  about  the  other. 

Do  not  these  teachers,  however,  in  their  zeal  of 
theory,  prove  too  much  for  the  gain  they  have  in 
view  ?  For  this  way  of  describing  knowledge  must 
apply  to  our  knowledge  of  other  minds ;  to  halt 
at  that  point  would  be  fatal;  the  view  must  com- 
pass all  the  world  or  none.  And  if  we  include 
other  minds,  then  the  w^orld  appears  with  "  streams 
of  consciousness"  in  it,  isolated,  each  one,  from 
all  others,  believing  each  in  the  separate  other, 
each  with  the  present  physical  object  given  and 
the  absent  object  conceived;  each  confronting  the 
question  whether  the  absent  object  shall  in  thought- 


246  NAIVE  REALISM 

f  ul  conception  be  held  real  in  the  same  sense  as  the 
separate  minds  or  its  own  past.  In  other  words 
we  have  our  world  over  again  with  all  its  difficul- 
ties. These  thinkers  would  draw  the  universe 
through  the  circlet  of  the  knowing  consciousness; 
it  is  their  triumph  in  their  own  eyes  that  they 
draw  it  all  safely  through;  but  the  result  is  that 
they  have  not  left  even  the  difficulties  behind. 
Most  plainly,  our  own  problem  stands  just  where 
it  did  before.  The  objection  is  not  now  what  it 
was  to  the  germ  of  Professor  Windelband's  doc- 
trine as  that  germ  lay  in  Berkeley's  writing;  the 
doctrine  does  not  now  deprive  us  of  a  distinction 
between  truth  and  error  about  absent  things. 
The  objection  is  that  it  is  too  wide  a  principle  to 
tell  us  anything  about  the  special  problem  of  ab- 
sent physical  objects  at  all.  Let  a  thing  be  "real" 
for  us  if  we  are  under  an  obligation  to  think  it :  we 
must  still  ask,  are  we  under  an  obligation  to  think 
of  absent  objects  as  real  in  the  same  sense  in 
which,  for  instance,  we  think  of  other  minds  as  so. 
If  the  answer  is  yes,  then  we  are  metaphysical 
realists  and  not  idealists  at  all.  If  the  answer  is 
no,  naive  realism  seems  to  go  by  the  board.  The 
doctrine  tells  us  something  about  the  forum  or 
sphere  of  thought  (I  need  not  ask  here  what  mean- 
ing is  left  in  its  description) ;  it  tells  us  nothing 
about  what  shall  occupy  it.  It  tells  us  perhaps 
something  about  the  canvas  and  the  pigments,  but 
nothing  about  the  features  of  the  ideal  scene.     In 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  247 

the  ideal  scene  are  separate  minds  that  think  about 
each  other.  Representation  then  is  an  inexpug- 
nable fact  in  this  world,  implicit  in  the  philoso- 
pher's thought  as  in  his  questioning  reader's,  and 
at  the  end  of  all  idealisms,  at  the  bottom  of  the 
most  German  of  philosophies,  Greek  meets 
Greek  after  all. 

Next  we  turn  to  the  development  of  Berkeley's 
second  device  for  accommodating  absent  objects, 
that  of  lodging  them  in  the  mind  of  an  Eternal 
Spirit.  This  theory  has  been  taken  up  since  his 
time;  it  has  been  remarked,  for  example,  that  if 
a  flower  is  "born  to  blush  unseen"  it  is  unseen 
only  by  men ;  it  has  its  existence  through  entering 
into  the  divine  experience.  We  are  interested  in 
this  only  as  it  bears  on  naive  realism.  Suppose 
we  simplify  it  by  omitting  from  the  mind  thus  sug- 
gested the  background  of  personal  will  and  feeling 
that  theologies  may  attribute  to  God.  There  re- 
mains a  consciousness  in  which  the  whole  span 
and  detail  of  the  material  universe  is  presented, 
and  so  far  nothing  else.  Further  I  shall  have  to 
assume  here,  without  reasoning,  that  what  we  call 
consciousness  is  nothing  but  what  psychologists 
call  "contents,"  together  with  the  relation  of 
joint  presentation,  or  let  us  say  simply  empirical 
conjunction,  that  exists  between  them;  the  so- 
called  subject  or  unity  of  consciousness  being  re- 
soluble into  this  ultimate  relation.  Conceive  now 
that  this  complete  and  duly  joined  "content"  of  a 


248  NAIVE  REALISM 

world,  of  quality  like  ours,  has  also  property  and 
process  like  ours ;  that  from  moment  to  moment  it 
changes,  its  parts  move,  and  then  rest,  just  as  mat- 
ter does  for  the  naive  realist.  Let  the  naive  realist 
think  of  his  physical  world  in  its  entirety.  Let  us 
think  of  this  other  sort  of  world.  What  would 
be  the  difference  between  the  two  ?  Would  there 
be  any  ? 

Hume  would  have  said,  none.  I  turn  again  to 
familiar  history,  for  we  are  trying  to  find  the  meta- 
physical conceptions  that  lend  themselves  to  an 
instinctive  way  of  thinking;  it  is  not  always  easy 
to  see  how  such  conceptions  operate ;  so  we  go  for 
instruction  to  the  workshop  where  they  were 
slowly  forged  and  put  together.  Hume  wrote: 
"All  ideas  are  borrowed  from  preceding  percep- 
tions. Our  ideas  of  objects,  therefore,  are  derived 
from  that  source.  Consequently  no  proposition 
can  be  intelligible  or  consistent  with  regard  to 
objects,  which  is  not  so  with  regard  to  percep- 
tions. But  't  is  intelligible  and  consistent  to  say 
that  objects  exist  distinct  and  independent.'* 
Which  means,  to  Hume's  thinking,  that  it  is  intelli- 
gible and  consistent  to  say  that  perceptions  exist 
in  detachment  from  personal  minds.  "This,"  he 
says,  "is  the  doctrine  of  the  vulgar,  and  implies 
no  contradiction."  If  the  vulgar  doctrine  is  right, 
then,  the  immediately  given  object  looses  itself 
from  our  consciousness  as  our  body  turns  away, 
but  continues  in  existence  and  in  its  place  in  the 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  249 

ordered  world.  It  will  be  seen  at  once  that  this 
justifies  the  naive  realist  as  to  the  direct  presence 
of  the  given  object,  and  as  to  the  reality  of  the 
absent  object,  without  the  disconcerting  "if." 
And  there  is  an  amendment  that  suggests  itself 
which  would  justify  him  still  further. 

For  if  such  a  colossal  "content"  or  perception 
would  be  identical  with  the  physical  world  of  com- 
mon belief,  what  is  the  point  in  calling  it  "con- 
tent" or  perception  or  mental  at  all.^  We  have 
apparently  found  ourselves  able  to  state  the  com- 
mon belief  in  "idealistic"  terms;  but  at  the  in- 
stant of  junction  between  the  two  does  not  the 
idealism  cease  to  be  such ;  cease  to  retain  any  dis- 
tinguishable meaning?  We  receive  back  our 
world,  in  which  the  streams  of  personal  impres- 
sions are  only  a  part,  and  in  which  the  solid  and 
continuous  world  stretches  between.  Shall  we  not 
then  say  that  Berkeley  did  a  service  in  showing 
objects  as  immediately  present,  and  that  the  steady 
push  of  Hume's  penetration  removes  all  that  was 
paradox  and  hard  saying  in  Berkeley's  system,  giv- 
ing us  common  sense  again,  philosophized  }  Since 
the  distinction  between  consciousness  and  matter 
was  the  distinction  between  the  streams  of  personal 
impressions  and  the  independent  world,  no  heart  of 
meaning  remains  in  calling  the  whole  mental. 

Well,  this  seems  a  broad  landing-place  for  our 
thought.  But  even  this  does  not  prove  an  abiding 
place.     There  are  reasons  for  moving  further. 


250  NAIVE   REALISM 

When  Hume  said  there  was  no  self-contradiction 
in  saying  that  a  partial  content  separates  itself  from 
the  rest  of  my  content  and  continues  to  exist  alone, 
he  was  surely  right.  Conceive  the  whole  material 
worldy  however,  as  a  great  content  existing  thus, 
and  it  becomes  evident  that  the  objects  now  pres- 
ent in  my  own  field  of  consciousness  must  be  du- 
plicated in  the  world- content.  Yet  naive  realism 
does  not  think  of  presented  objects  as  duplicates 
of  complete  objects  unpresented.  Shall  we  take 
refuge  in  saying  that  to  the  extent  to  which  objects 
are  presented  to  me,  I  actually  share  the  physical 
world- perception ;  that  the  whole  matter- content 
is  not  my  content  but  that  certain  bits  of  it  momen- 
tarily are  ?  This  seems  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
It  would  be  to  say  that  an  identical  content  can  be 
in  two  fields  of  consciousness  at  once.  Try  to  sup- 
pose a  content  X  in  two  minds  or  fields  one  of 
which  contains  also  the  private  content  A,  and  the 
second  of  which  contains  also  the  private  content 
B.  Joint  presentation  or  empirical  conjunction, 
that  which  constitutes  a  field,  is  a  relation  between 
contents.  Now  in  field  No.  1  X  stands  in  a  rela- 
tion of  conjunction  with  A,  while  in  field  No.  2 
it  does  not  stand  in  that  relation,  A  being  left  out- 
side. So  the  result  is  that  the  same  content,  at 
the  same  time,  does  and  does  not  stand  in  a  certain 
relation  to  another. 

Ah !  but,  it  will  be  said,  add  the  amendment 
that  suggested  itself.     Do  not  call  the  material 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  251 

total  a  content,  call  it  simply  a  material  total,  across 
which  the  little  spots  of  consciousness  flit  without 
disturbing  it.  In  that  case  the  relation  of  con- 
junction in  a  field  would  be  a  momentary  relation 
between  objects,  which  when  they  passed  out  of  that 
field  they  would  bear  no  longer.  AYith  this  change 
of  words,  however,  the  obstacle  really  remains  as 
before.  But  another  obstacle  of  the  same  order 
can  perhaps  be  pointed  out  more  briefly.  Anyone 
who  should  accept  such  a  view  must  hold  also  that 
the  same  object  or  part  of  it  might  be  presented 
to  two  human  minds;  otherwise  there  would  be  a 
duplication  repugnant  to  naive  realism.  Here  is 
the  self-contradiction  again;  and  I  agree  with 
Hume  that  we  cannot  ascribe  such  a  contradiction 
to  the  famihar,  constant  thought  of  ages. 

Thus  even  in  their  developed  forms  Berkeley's 
first  and  second  conceptions  of  the  unperceived 
object  fail  us  as  interpretations  of  naive  realism. 
In  approaching  the  development  of  the  third  it 
will  be  necessary  to  consider  deliberately  what  we 
mean  by  "consciousness,"  a  term  which  according 
to  the  tradition  of  English  philosophy  I  use  in  the 
same  sense  as  "experience." 

Ill 

When  I  survey  the  things  about  me,  my  natural 
associations  are  physical  and  topographical,  for  the 
movement  of  my  organs  of  sense  has  so  repeatedly 


252  NAIVE  REALISM 

made  that  sort  of  connection.    From  the  side  of  the 
peach  turned  toward  me  I  have  looked  round  it  to 
see  if  it  was  sound;   I  have  presently  cut  it  open, 
taken  out  the  stone,  seen  the  red  fibrous  tissue 
that  had  been  about  it,  and  the  flesh  of  the  peach. 
When  I  enter  a  room  a  large  desk  may  hide  much 
of  it  from  me,  but  as  I  come  forward  I  open  up, 
as  it  were,  part  after  part  that  was  hidden.     When 
I  look  at  the  desk  a  foreshortened  aspect  of  one 
side  appears  to  the  eye,  but  I  open  it,  sit  down,  pull 
out  a  drawer,  look  into  a  compartment,  take  up  a 
memorandum-book,  turn  over  pages,  and  so  in  a 
hundred  obvious  ways  draw  new  perceptions  from 
what  I  call  the  desk  and  its  contents.     I  had  en- 
tered  the   room  from   the   house  and   the  house 
from  the  neighboring  places ;    and  all  these  tran- 
sitions  effected   again   and   again  have   left   their 
strong  impress  on  my  tendencies  of  association. 
If  I  should  stop  myself  on  entering  the  room  in  a 
fit  of  self-cross-examination  and  ask  myself  what 
the  desk,  of  which  but  one  side  shows,  foreshort- 
ened, really  is,  my  thought  would  pass  rapidly  to 
its  writing- surface,  its  store  of  writing-materials, 
and  the  rest.     If  I  try  to  take  in  a  larger  part  of 
things  my  thought  will  be  likely  to  pass  to  the 
whole  room,  the  house,  the  neighborhood,  the  city, 
state,  country,  globe.    That  is  what  I  mean  by  my 
thought's    ranging    topographically.      There    are, 
however,  other  physical  associations  besides  those 
of  neighborhood.    Loosened  screws  may  suggest  a 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  253 

screw- driver  which  is  far  away,  or  a  carpenter  who 
is  farther.  (A  carpenter,  be  it  said  in  passing,  is 
for  most  of  us  in  most  of  our  moments  a  purely 
physical  tool,  comparatively  self-acting  as  com- 
pared with  the  screw- driver.)  Or  a  ball  may  carry 
the  mind  to  a  game  in  open  country,  or  the  fields 
to  the  ball,  or  a  chemical  compound  to  its  compo- 
nent parts,  or  stones  to  pavements.  In  all  this  we 
are  led  from  idea  to  idea  or  from  percept  to  idea 
along  the  paths  of  perceptual  succession  or  the 
paths  of  familiar  thought  about  perceptions.  This 
is  objective  association.  Of  such  is  the  mental 
stream  of  most  men,  and  even  though  they  may  ex- 
perience or  think  of  emotions  and  desires  that  color 
their  percepts  and  ideas,  yet  these,  though  they  are 
the  motive  power,  are  not  so  often  the  pivot  of  asso- 
ciation. When  they  are  it  is  for  a  moment,  to  start 
the  mind  in  another  objective  train. 

Now  for  some  human  beings  at  some  times,  for 
a  very  few  human  beings  often,  there  is  quite  an- 
other kind  of  association.  We  sometimes  try  to 
attain  it,  though  not  very  exactly,  when  we  are 
trying  to  remember  where  we  put  something  lost. 
We  remember  that  we  noticed  the  open  desk  five 
minutes  ago.  We  try  thereupon  to  remember 
what  we  did  or  noticed  next.  The  contents  and 
uses  of  the  desk  may  come  up  to  the  mind  with 
the  importunity  of  custom,  but  we  thrust  them 
down ;  in  psychological  language  we  inhibit  them 
by  fixing  voluntary   attention   with  effort  on  the 


254  NAIVE  REALISM 

idea  we  wish  to  keep:  the  desk  just  so  far  as  we 
noticed  it,  as  it  figured  in  our  personal  experience, 
at  that  moment;  for  we  hope  it  will  call  up  what 
figured  next  (another  object  noticed,  words  heard, 
a  feeling  roused,  a  plan  suggested),  and  so  bring 
us  in  time  to  the  forgotten  action.  The  usual  aver- 
age sequences  that  keep  offering  themselves  we 
keep  excluding ;  what  we  invite  is  only  the  sequence 
that  obtained  on  a  particular  occasion. 

The  introspective  memory  of  the  psychologist  is 
but  an  effort  to  make  this  same  difficult  selective 
association  exact.  The  difference  between  it  and 
the  objective  association  is  the  difference  between 
thinking  about  consciousness  and  thinking  about 
matter.  It  is  one  of  the  two  sources  of  the  distinc- 
tion between  consciousness  and  matter  themselves. 
The  other  exists  in  the  phenomenon  of  my  fellow- 
man.  His  body  is  an  object  for  consecutive  per- 
ception like  the  desk;  but  I  cannot  find  his 
perceptions  in  it ;  nor  yet  his  feelings,  willings,  or 
ideas.  If  I  want  to  realize  his  view  of  the  desk,  I 
must  note  his  position  toward  it,  and  try  in  idea  to 
see  the  desk  in  that  aspect.  All  that  belongs  other- 
wise to  the  desk  I  must  keep  out;  I  only  want 
what  he  saw  or  thought  of ;  in  other  words  I  must 
now  practice  toward  him  in  imagination,  without 
the  aid  of  spontaneous  memory,  the  kind  of  selec- 
tive association  I  employed  to  bring  up  my  own 
past  experience. 

This  points  us  at  once  to  the  nature  of  con- 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  255 

sciousness  in  contradistinction  from  the  nature  of 
matter.  I  refer  to  matter  as  it  figures  in  our  natu- 
ral view  of  the  world,  in  the  vernacular  of  thought. 
Matter  is  a  thing  of  many  aspects,  consciousness 
has  but  one.  Matter  is  permanent,  the  content  of 
consciousness  fleeting.  The  difference  is  not  one 
of  stuff,  quality,  or  simple  kind. 

The  power  of  thinking  persistently  of  conscious- 
ness in  its  single  aspect,  which  is  its  whole  being, 
may  be  called  the  Psychological  Imagination.  It 
is  of  course  very  rarely  found  and  can  only  be  es- 
tablished by  arduous  practice.  Clearly  it  must 
think  of  consciousness  never  as  an  object,  for  ob- 
jects have  many  aspects,  to  be  explored  in  succes- 
sion; but  always  subjectively,  as  it  comes.  The 
being  of  a  feeling  is  its  being  felt.  Consciousness 
is  the  realm  in  which  appearance  and  reahty  coin- 
cide. In  this,  of  course,  the  single  state  or  field  of 
consciousness  is  meant.  To  think  of  such  a  field 
justly  is  to  think  of  it  just  as  it  seems.  It  has  no 
hidden  nature,  no  underside,  no  central  substance 
or  kernel,  no  interior  recesses  to  be  explored.  All 
that  order  of  appurtenance  is  confined  to  matter, 
which  reveals  aspect  after  aspect  to  the  advancing 
percipient,  each  aspect  as  perceived  being  called, 
when  the  psychological  imagination  seizes  it,  a  con- 
tent of  consciousness.  A  consciousness  may  be  in 
the  given  case  a  spatial  content,  but  not  being  an 
object  it  is  not  in  space.  We  cannot  expect  ever  to 
discover  it,  to  say  "Lo  here,"  or  "Lo  there'*  of 


25Q  NAIVE  REALISM 

it.  It  is  nowhere;  a  reality  to  which  location  is 
irrelevant.  For  itself  it  does  not  need  to  be  dis- 
covered; in  other  fields  of  consciousness  it  can  at 
best  be  represented. 

Returning  now  to  naive  realism,  shall  we  say,  as 
above,  that  for  it  the  whole  of  the  physical  world 
has,  like  consciousness,  an  ultimate  and  irresoluble 
existence  ?  Impossible.  Not  even  jor  the  naive 
realist.  For  matter  is  a  realm  of  aspects  and  these 
aspects,  congenial  enough  in  succession  and  alter- 
nation, will  not  fit  together  to  form  in  one  total 
a  coherent  world.  The  desk  as  a  light- brown 
total  or  unit,  the  desk  as  a  complex  combination 
of  drawers  and  compartments  to  the  right  and 
left,  the  desk  as  a  wilderness  of  woody  fibre,  the 
desk,  if  you  will,  as  a  host  of  ordered  molecules  or 
atoms,  are  different  desks,  and  will  in  no  wise  go 
together.  I  have  spoken  of  the  problem  of  present 
objects  and  the  problem  of  absent  objects.  But 
every  present  object  is  partly  absent;  integral 
aspects  of  what  we  should  call  the  object  are  unper- 
ceived.  In  perception  we  have  one  aspect,  en- 
larged with  a  few  strokes  by  peering  imagination 
to  represent  the  rest.  For  the  foreshortened  view 
we  half  substitute  the  normal  view  and  under  all 
is  a  depth  of  the  tactual  and  kinsesthetic  order. 
But  if  we  could  bring  in  all  sides  and  features 
of  the  object  we  should  not  have  a  desk,  but  a 
monstrous  medley.  If  the  divine  mind  tried  to 
vergegenwdrtigen  all  matter  at  once,  it  would  have. 


DICKINSON   S.  MILLER  257 

not  one  picture,  but  a  multitude  of  models  on 
all  scales.  And  precisely  because  this  supposed 
"content"  would  really,  in  kind  or  stuff,  be  in- 
distinguishable from  the  plain  man's  matter,  the 
plain  man's  matter  is  subject  to  the  same  con- 
ditions. The  incompatibility  is  logical.  A  con- 
tinuous polished  brown  surface  is  not  a  fibrous  or 
a  granulated  surface.  A  marshalling  of  what  we 
scientifically  mean  by  molecules  is  not  what  we 
familiarly  mean  by  a  desk.  It  may  be  said  that 
we  must  on  reflection  let  the  desk  go  and  keep  the 
molecules.  In  that  case  we  should  have  to  ask 
whether  the  same  diflSculty  did  not  apply  over  again 
to  the  various  aspects  of  the  molecules.  But  we 
need  not,  for  our  subject  is  naive  realism,  which 
will  not  let  the  desk  go,  and  yet  recognizes  no 
difficulty  in  keeping  both. 

The  problem,  briefly,  is  this.  Can  all  the  as- 
pects of  matter  be  compacted  into  what  may  be 
called  one  aspect  ?  A  mind  that  fully  knew  them, 
knew  them  even  representatively,  would  know  them 
so.  And  would  this  joint  aspect  be  acceptable  to 
naive  realism  as  its  world  in  sum  ?  That  is  the 
test.  If  not,  then  we  cannot  say  that  naive  real- 
ism regards  its  world  as  all  concurrently  real  in 
the  ultimate  sense  of  that  word.  It  is  debarred 
from  doing  so  by  inability. 

Of  course,  as  we  saw,  the  common  conscious- 
ness has  no  "if."  Really  to  think  an  "if"  means 
to  think  in  some  form  an  alternative.    But  when  I 

17 


258  NAifVE  REALISM 

represent  unperceived  aspects  there  is  no  practical 
need  of  representing  any  alternative  to  their  ap- 
pearing each  in  its  due  place  and  turn.  Let  us 
admit  it  at  once:  naive  realism  does  not  bother 
itself  to  carry  any  idea  about  with  it  that  is  not 
essential  for  practice.  My  only  reason  for  not 
accepting  naive  realism  as  a  sufficient  metaphysic 
of  matter  is  that  there  is  no  such  theory.  It  is 
more  naive  than  we  thought.  All  there  is  of  it  is 
acceptable.  One  phase  of  what  there  is  of  it  is  the 
flexibility  of  the  conceptions  with  which  it  works, 
its  ready  submission  to  the  substitutions  of  expe- 
rience, the  ease  of  mind  with  which  for  the  moment 
it  is  off  with  the  old  and  on  with  the  new.  The 
revealed  aspect  of  the  present  object  is  for  us  a 
sign  of  aspects  that  might  come.  Now  the  naive 
realist's  notion  of  absent  objects,  being  got  from 
them  when  they  or  their  kind  were  present,  is 
always  as  much  like  his  impression  of  present  ob- 
jects as  possible.  The  aspects  of  absent  objects 
that  he  represents  in  his  thought  of  them  are  signs 
of  the  other  phases  in  reserve.  Just  as  he  does 
not  label  them  as  mere  signs  when  they  are  percep- 
tions, so  he  does  not  when  they  are  ideas.  But 
their  function  and  utiUty  are  to  stand  there  in  his 
mind  as  signs  of  more.  When  we  so  recognize 
and  class  them  we  do  not  undo  naive  realism,  we 
only  interpret  and  complete  it.  In  other  words, 
naive  realism  does  not  of  course  deny  in  its  own 
thought  that  the  aspects  of  its  world  are  in  the 


DICKINSON  S.  MILLER  259 

strict  sense  concurrently  real;  it  merely  omits  any 
affirmation  on  the  subject ;  leaving  it  to  metaphysics 
to  perceive  that  they  could  not  be. 

The  truth  is  that  if  we  would  understand  our 
natural  notions  of  the  external  world,  we  should 
ask  ourselves,  not  what  we  think  about  it,  but  how 
we  think  about  it ;  not  what  verdict  do  our  judg- 
ments give,  but  what  is  the  nature  or  method  of 
judgment  on  the  subject.  We  have  not  yet  thrown 
off  the  tyranny  of  language.  We  still  expect  to 
find  a  judgment  built  like  a  sentence,  and  an  idea 
packed  with  all  that  is  mentioned  in  the  definition 
of  the  term  we  have  for  it.  But  the  elements  of 
thought  are  fragments  with  forces,  and  a  definition 
tells  merely  the  ideas  that  are  recoverable  by  the 
mind  at  need  as  justly  pertaining  to  a  term.  Put 
your  questions  to  the  rustic  or  the  child  or  your 
naive  self,  and  they  will  discourse  fluent  language 
in  reply.  The  difficulty  does  not  lie  between  the 
subject-matter  and  their  answers,  but  between  their 
answers  and  their  ideas.  Not  that  there  could  be 
any  more  apt  expression  of  their  ideas,  but  that  the 
metaphysical  cross-examiner  may  not  understand 
the  laws  of  expression.  A  little  advance  upon 
naivete  is  a  dangerous  thing.  About  natural  real- 
ism we  have  just  reached  what  seems  a  sore  ex- 
tremity of  paradox;  but  then  when  language  is 
confronted  with  thought,  as  thought  is  seen  by  the 
psychological  imagination,  paradox  is  the  invariable 
result. 


260  NAIVE   REALISM 

Berkeley's  third  explanation  of  the  existence  of 
unperceived  objects  was  developed  in  the  doctrine 
of  Mill  that  they  are  permanent  possibilities  of 
experience,  and  Mill  attributed  this  view  of  them 
to  the  ordinary  mind.  Our  business  is  with  the 
ordinary  mind  only,  and  our  conclusion  brings  us 
into  the  neighborhood  of  Mill's.  (1)  The  stuff 
of  which  unperceived  objects  are  made  in  our 
thought  of  them  is  of  course  solely  the  stuff  of  ex- 
perience; (2)  this  stuff  is  never  compacted  by  our 
thought  into  ''whole  objects,"  all  the  aspects  of 
which  exist  together,  as  philosophical  realism  re- 
quires; (3)  however,  the  fact  that  the  aspects  do 
not  so  exist  together  is  not  consciously  recognized 
by  our  thought,  which  merely  takes  them  in  turn 
without  trying  to  put  them  together  and  thus  test 
their  compatibility.  The  fact  that  we  never  try  to 
weld  all  the  aspects  into  one  is  the  very  reason  why 
we  do  not  know  that  they  are  incompatible  and 
are  surprised  when  we  are  told  so.  Unperceived 
objects  then  are  possibilities  of  successive  experi- 
ence to  us,  as  they  figure  in  our  natural  thought, 
but  Mill  was  mistaken  if  he  meant  that  we  class 
them  as  such.^ 

Our  problem  in  its  totality  has  been  double: 
what  is  naive  realism  in  its  belief  about  perceived 
objects,  and  what  is  it  in  its  belief  about  objects 

*  Very  likely  he  did  not  mean  this.  Perhaps  hia  language  only  marks 
the  fact  that  he  had  not  sufficiently  separated  the  problem  of  naive  thought 
from  that  of  philosophic  truth,  or  thought  the  former  problem  out  in  the 
respect  in  which  we  have  last  been  studying  it. 


DICKINSON  S.  MILLER  261 

unperceived  ?  These  terms,  however,  have  been 
coarsely  used  and  need  analysis.  In  one  possible 
sense  no  object  is  perceived.  Most  of  what  belongs 
to  its  integrity,  and  to  its  character  as  that  object, 
does  not  appear  in  the  perception.  Should  we 
then  speak  only  of  perceived  aspects  and  unper- 
ceived aspects  ?  No,  for  the  "  one  possible  sense  " 
in  which  we  here  speak  of  perception  is  a  perverted 
sense.  Properly  speaking,  perception  is  the  posses- 
sion of  certain  aspects  fins  the  preparedness  for 
others.  The  aspects  possessed  shade  off  into  vague- 
ness. The  preparedness,  considered  as  a  psycho- 
logical fact,  is  no  doubt  partly  the  associative 
function  of  the  elements  present  in  consciousness, 
and  therefore  not  itself  present  in  consciousness  at 
all ;  and  partly  an  element  of  consciousness  answer- 
ing to  motor  processes  half  awakened.  Perception 
is  a  step  out  into  a  world  of  objects,  with  the  other 
foot  held  ready,  as  it  were,  for  another  step. 
Objectivity  itself  is  the  potentiality  of  further 
spatial  aspects,  and,  these  aspects  being  as  we 
have  seen  incompatible,  the  nature  of  objectivity 
itself  excludes  the  notion  that  they  co-exist  as 
**  natural  realism  "  turned  into  metaphysic  would 
require. 


KANT  AND  THE  ENGLISH  PLATONISTS 


KANT  AND  THE  ENGLISH  PLATONISTS 

By  Arthur  O.  Lovejot 

A  MEMORABLE  philosophical  discourse  deliv- 
ered by  Professor  James  at  Berkeley  in  1898  — 
the  discourse  in  which  the  term  "pragmatism" 
as  the  name  for  a  philosophical  method  was  first 
sent  forth  upon  its  extraordinary  career  —  con- 
cluded with  this  striking  historical  generahzation : 
"I  beheve  that  Kant  bequeaths  to  us  not  one  sin- 
gle conception  which  is  both  indispensable  to  phi- 
losophy and  which  philosophy  either  did  not  possess 
before  him  or  was  not  destined  inevitably  to  acquire 
after  him  through  the  growth  of  men's  reflection 
upon  the  hypotheses  by  which  science  interprets 
nature.  The  true  hue  of  philosophic  progress  lies, 
in  short,  it  seems  to  me,  not  so  much  through  Kant 
as  round  him  to  the  point  where  now  we  stand.  Phi- 
losophy can  perfectly  well  outflank  him,  and  build 
herself  up  into  adequate  fulness  by  prolonging 
more  directly  the  older  Enghsh  Hues." 

The  present  paper  is  a  partial  commentary  upon 
this  text;  and  it  will  offer  certain  detailed  evidence 
for  the  substantial  accuracy  of  the  generahzation 
in  precisely  that  particular  where  it  may  seem  at 

265 


266     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

first  sight,  and  to  most  readers,  to  be  least  plausible. 
By  the  generalization,  as  I  here  propose  to  justify 
it,  I  by  no  means  understand  it  to  be  implied  that 
Kant  rendered  no  useful  service  to  philosophy,  nor 
that  he  is  not  historically  a  figure  of  exceptional 
importance.  But  I  do  understand  the  observation 
to  mean  —  what  I  also  believe  to  be  a  precisely 
verifiable  fact  —  that  the  Kantian  doctrine  was 
destitute  of  any  radical  originahty;  that  none  of 
the  more  general  and  fundamental  contentions  of 
the  "Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunft"  were  particularly 
novel  or  revolutionary  at  the  time  of  their  original 
promulgation;  and  that  the  principal  develop- 
ments of  post-Kantian  philosophy,  even  in  the  os- 
tensibly Kantian  schools,  were  not  dependent  upon 
the  historic  interposition  of  the  ingenious  com- 
plexities of  the  critical  system,  but  were  clearly 
present  in  germ,  sometimes  even  in  fairly  full- 
blown form,  in  the  writings  of  Kant's  predecessors 
or  contemporaries,  out  of  which  they  would  in  time 
inevitably  have  come  to  fruition.  To  the  general- 
ization as  thus  construed  I  think  it  necessary, 
however,  to  make  one  exception,  and  that  one  of 
especial  interest  in  the  present  connection.  Kant's 
doctrine  of  the  "primacy  of  the  practical  reason,'* 

—  both  in  its  negative  and  its  positive  imphcations, 

—  I  take  to  be  the  original  of  a  large  and  diversi- 
fied class  of  subsequent  tendencies,  of  which  the 
movement  known  as  pragmatism  is  (at  least  in  cer- 
tain of  its  aspects)  one  variant.    Even  this  idea  was 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  267 

assuredly  not  new;  but  I  know  of  no  philosopher 
before  Kant  who  asserted  it  so  definitely  and  pre- 
cisely and  gave  it  such  place  as  a  central  methodo- 
logical principle.  But  this  one  doctrine  aside,  the 
text  which  I  have  chosen  needs,  I  believe,  no  very 
material  quahfication.  That  it  seems  —  as  it 
probably  does  —  to  many  a  glaring  historical  para- 
dox, signifies  only  that  the  commonly,  or  at  least 
the  popularly,  accepted  general  outHne  of  the  his- 
tory of  philosophy  is  lacking  in  any  great  measure 
of  historical  truth.  That  part  of  it  which  concerns 
Kant's  historical  place  and  relations  is  particularly 
full  of  mensonges  convenus  —  as  a  result,  partly,  of 
certain  pecuharities  of  Kant's  own  mind,  partly 
of  certain  pecuharities  of  the  intellectual  fashions 
prevalent  in  Germany  between  1780  and  1820,  and 
partly  of  certain  peculiarities  of  the  dominant  tra- 
ditions of  the  German  mind  during  the  greater  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  the  present  short 
paper  I  shall,  of  course,  attempt  to  deal  only  with 
a  single  phase  of  this  subject. 

The  "older  Enghsh  hues"  in  philosophy  which 
Professor  James  had  in  view  in  the  concluding  pas- 
sage of  his  Berkeley  address  were,  I  suppose,  chiefly 
the  British  empiricist  and  sceptical  movements  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  perhaps  the  Newtonian 
cosmical  physics.  That  the  critical  or  negative  side 
of  Kant's  doctrine  —  its  antimetaphysical  temper, 
the  positivistic  note  of  the  Aujkldrung  which  sounds 
so  loudly,  especially  in  the  Preface  of  the  First  Edi- 


268     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

tion  —  is  largely  derivative  from  earlier,  and  chiefly 
from  British,  sources,  is  tolerably  obvious,  since 
Kant  himseK  made  acknowledgment  of  his  obliga- 
tion here  in  a  famous  and  now  hackneyed  phrase. 
But,  it  may  be  asked,  were  not  the  aflSrmative, 
constructive  elements  in  the  system  —  the  trans- 
cendental ideaHsm  and  the  arguments  upon  which 
it  is  based,  the  general  doctrine  of  the  a  priori  con- 
ditions of  the  possibiHty  of  experience,  the  assertion 
of  the  active  functioning  of  the  mind  in  the  deter- 
mination even  of  objects  of  sense-perception  — 
were  not  these  thoughts  original  with  Kant  and 
peculiar  to  him  ?  Original  they  may  have  been,  if 
by  that  is  meant  only  that  Kant  did  not  actually 
borrow  them  from  any  other  philosopher.  But 
essentially  new  they  were  not.  That  they  are  rather 
generally  supposed  to  have  been  so  is  due  partly 
to  the  prevailing  neglect  —  sometimes  even  by 
learned  historians  of  philosophy  —  of  an  interesting 
and  by  no  means  uninfluential  movement  in  Eng- 
lish thought.  The  English  Platonists  ^  of  the  later 
seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth  century,  though 
they  are  not  as  a  rule  easy  reading,  and  though  they 
are  commonly  very  deficient  in  that  critical  and 
sceptical  temper  which  Kant  had  learned  from 
the  long  discipline  of  the  Enlightenment,  are  not  a 
negligible  quantity  in  the  history  of  European  phi- 
losophy.   But  they  have  been   very  inadequately 

*  One  cannot  properly  sp)eak  of  them  as  Cambridge  Platonists,  for  several 
of  the  most  significant  metaphysicians  of  this  period  and  this  general  school 
—  Burthogge,  Norris  of  Bemerton,  Collier  —  were  Oxford  men. 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  269 

dealt  with  by  English  students  of  philosophy  ;  and  it 
is  a  humiliating  fact  that,  just  as,  until  the  pubhea- 
tion  of  the  first  volume  of  Dr.  Woodbridge  Riley's 
monumental  work,  the  only  serious  attempt  at  a 
comprehensive  history  of  philosophy  in  America 
was  due  to  a  French  scholar,  so  for  a  large  part  of 
the  history  of  this  remarkable  episode  in  Enghsh 
epistemology  and  metaphysics  we  are  still  de- 
pendent upon  M.  Georges  Lyon's  "L'Idealisme 
en  Angleterre  au  XVIII*  siecle."  Modern  and 
accessible  editions  of  the  writings,  or  of  judicious 
selections  from  the  writings,  of  most  of  these  early 
Enghsh  rationahsts  and  ideahsts  are  still  to  seek. 

In  what  follows  I  shall  undertake  to  present  evi- 
dence for  the  truth  of  three  observations  respecting 
these  English  Platonists  :  (1)  that  i^xoy  anticipated 
Kant  in  his  so-called  "Copernican  revolution," 
and,  incidentally  thereto,  in  his  general  doctrine  of 
a  priori  mental  elements,  in  his  main  line  of  argu- 
ment for  the  existence  of  such  elements,  and  in  the 
pecuhar  type  of  "transcendental"  idealism  which 
resulted  from  that  epistemological  doctrine;  (2) 
that  Kant  was  similarly  anticipated  by  one  of  these 
English  philosophers  in  the  employment  of  the  ar- 
gument from  the  mathematical  antinomies  concern- 
ing infinity  and  infinite  divisibihty  as  a  final  and 
definitive  proof  of  the  ideahty  of  the  spatial  world ; 
(3)  that  the  most  characteristic  ideas  and  tenden- 
cies of  the  so-called  neo- Kantian  school,  especially 
in  England  and  America,  are  already  plainly  recog- 


270     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

nizable  in  certain  of  these  English  Platonists,  so 
that  one  is  entitled  to  say  that  the  metaphysical  and 
theological  conclusions  and  the  dialectical  devices 
which  this  school  is  supposed  to  have  elaborated 
out  of  Kantian  materials  might  equally  well  have 
been  derived  from  the  English  idealists  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century.  In  undertaking  to  demonstrate 
these  three  points,  I  necessarily  must  limit  myself 
to  emphasizing  similarities ;  through  the  resem- 
blances to  be  noted  there  run,  of  course,  plenty  of 
differences  of  detail,  of  mental  temper  and  attitude, 
of  historic  heritage.  These  differences  are  not 
less  instructive  than  the  analogies,  and  it  would  be 
interesting  to  scrutinize  them  closely,  if  space  per- 
mitted. But  in  the  limits  here  available,  it  seems 
more  to  the  point  to  dwell  chiefly  upon  that  side  of 
the  historical  relations  in  question  which  appears 
to  be  the  more  frequently  overlooked. 


The  part  of  Kant's  epistemology  which  seemed 
to  him  so  novel  and  so  momentous  that  he  likened 
it  to  a  "Copernican  revolution"  in  philosophy, 
consisted  in  the  hypothesis  that  knowledge  de- 
pends upon  the  "conformity  of  objects  to  our 
mode  of  cognition  "  rather  than  upon  the  conform- 
ity of  our  mode  of  cognition  to  objects.  This  doc- 
trine that  "the  world  as  object  is  conditioned 
by  me  as  subject,"  whether  regarded  as  a  daring 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  271 

paradox  or  as  an  ultimate  truth,  has  generally  been 
supposed  to  be  sufficient  of  itself  to  establish  the 
reputation  of  the  Kantian  system  for  epoch-making 
originality;  and,  especially  by  the  literary  popu- 
larizers  of  philosophy,  it  has  very  frequently  been 
looked  upon  as  the  supreme  example  of  the  profun- 
dity of  Kant's  speculative  insight.  It  is,  says  Mr. 
W.  S.  Lilly ,^  "the  deepest  thought  that  has  ever 
entered  the  human  mind."  However  that  may  be 
—  there  is  little  profit  in  disputing  about  superla- 
tives —  the  thought  is  at  all  events  one  that  had 
entered  a  number  of  Enghsh  minds,  and  had  been 
set  forth  in  more  than  one  widely-read  book  during 
the  century  preceding  the  birth  of  the  Critical 
Philosophy.  To  speak  of  it  as  a  peculiarly  "  Kant- 
ian" contribution  to  the  world's  stock  of  ideas  is  an 
historical  absurdity;  that  Kant  himself  considered 
it  a  thing  startling  and  revolutionary  is  only  one 
among  many  illustrations  of  his  astonishing  igno- 
rance, or  forgetfulness,  of  all  save  a  very  few  of 
the  philosophical  discoveries  and  tendencies  of  his 
own  age  and  of  the  generation  or  two  that  preceded 
him.  For  the  English  Platonists  could  not  w^ell 
have  been  more  exphcit  or  emphatic  than  they  were 
in  insisting  that  the  mind  is  no  tabula  rasa  but  a 
thing  possessing  a  fixed  constitution  of  its  own 
antecedently  to  experience ;  that,  not  only  in  reflec- 
tive cognition  but  even  in  sense- perception,  it  has 
an  active,  and  not  a  merely  passive,  role ;  and  that 

*  Fortnightly  Review,  August,  1906. 


272     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

the  object  is  determined  by  the  nature  and  catego- 
ries of  the  mind  rather  than  the  contents  of  the 
mind  by  the  simple  infiltration  of  ready-made  ob- 
jects. In  the  most  celebrated  of  the  productions  of 
the  Cambridge  school,  Cudworth's  "  True  Intellec- 
tual System  of  the  Universe  "  (1678)  —  a  work  that 
has,  behind  all  the  quaintness  and  naivete  of  its 
style,  a  good  deal  more  philosophical  acumen  than 
it  usually  gets  credit  for  —  the  opinions  in  question 
are  expounded  with  characteristic  prolixity.  Cud- 
worth  and  his  like-minded  contemporaries  were 
brought  to  the  elaboration  of  this  type  of  doctrine 
largely  by  their  reaction  against  the  empiricism  and 
imphcit  scepticism  of  Hobbes,  to  whom  their  rela- 
tion was  entirely  analogous  to  that  of  Kant  to 
Hume.  I  am  inclined  to  think,  however,  that  the 
empiricism  of  Hume  represented  a  greater  advance 
—  in  clarity  of  thought  and  force  of  reasoning  — 
over  that  of  Hobbes,  than  did  the  apriorist  ration- 
ahsm  of  Kant  over  that  of  the  English  Platonists. 
"We  have,"  says  Cudworth,  "set  it  for  the  elev- 
enth atheistic  argument,  that  knowledge  being  the 
information  of  the  things  themselves  known,  and 
all  conception  the  action  of  that  which  is  conceived 
and  the  passion  [i.  e.,  the  passive  receptivity]  of  the 
conceiver;  the  world  and  all  sensible  things  must 
needs  be,  before  there  could  be  any  knowledge  or 
conception  of  them.  .  .  .  For,  according  to  these 
atheists,  things  made  knowledge,  and  not  knowl- 
edge things;    they  meaning  by  things  here  only 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  273 

such  as  are  sensible  and  corporeal.  So  that  mind 
and  understanding  could  not  be  the  creator  of  the 
world  and  these  sensible  things,  itself  being  the 
mere  creature  of  them ;  a  secondary  derivative  re- 
sult from  them,  or  a  fantastic  image  of  them ;  the 
youngest  and  most  creaturely  thing  in  the  whole 
world.  .  .  .  Now  we  shall,  for  the  present,  only 
so  far  forth  concern  ourselves  in  confuting  this 
atheistic  doctrine  as  to  lay  a  foundation  thereby 
for  the  demonstration  of  the  contrary,  namely,  the 
existence  of  a  God,  or  of  a  mind  before  the  world, 
from  the  nature  of  knowledge  and  understanding. 
First,  then,  it  is  a  sottish  conceit  of  these  atheists, 
proceeding  from  their  not  attending  to  their  own 
cogitations,  that  not  only  sense,  but  also  knowledge 
and  understanding  in  men,  is  but  a  tumult,  raised 
from  corporeal  things  without  pressing  upon  the 
organs  of  their  body ;  or  else,  as  they  declare  them- 
selves more  distinctly,  nothing  but  the  activity  of 
sensible  objects  upon  them  and  their  passion  from 
them.  For  if  this  were  true,  then  would  everything 
that  suffered  and  reacted  motion,  especially  polite 
bodies,  as  looking-glasses,  have  something  both  of 
sense  and  understanding  in  them.  It  is  plain  that 
there  comes  nothing  to  us  from  bodies  without,  but 
only  local  motion  and  pressure.  Neither  is  sense 
itself  the  mere  passion  of  those  motions,  but  the  per- 
ception of  their  passions  in  a  way  of  fancy.  But 
sensible  things  themselves  (as,  for  example,  light 
and  colors)  are  not  known  and  understood  either  by 

18 


274     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

the  passion  or  the  farwy  of  sense,  nor  by  anything 
merely  foreign  and  adventitious,  but  by  intelligible 
ideas  exerted  from  the  mind  itself,  that  is,  by  some- 
thing native  and  domestic  to  it:  nothing  being  more 
true  than  this  of  Boetius,  that  *  Omne,  quod  scitur, 
non  ex  sua,  sed  ex  comprehendentium  natura,  vi, 
et  facultate  cognoscitur : '  Whatsoever  is  known, 
is  known,  not  by  its  own  force  and  power,  but 
by  the  force  and  power,  the  vigor  and  activity  of 
that  thing  itself,  which  knows  and  comprehends. 
Wherefore,  besides  the  phantasms  of  singular 
bodies,  or  of  sensible  things  existing  without  us 
(which  are  not  mere  passions  neither),  it  is  plain 
that  our  human  mind  hath  other  cogitations  or 
conceptions  in  it;  namely,  the  ideas  of  the  intel- 
ligible natures  and  essences  of  things,  which  are 
universal,  and  by  and  under  which  it  understands 
singulars.'*  ^ 

Here,  then,  we  find  in  Cudworth  the  good  Kant- 
ian doctrine  that  even  the  presented  object  of 
sense  is  what  it  is  because  it  gets  its  constitution 
from  the  constitution  of  the  mind  that  apprehends 
it;  although  Cudworth,  like  Kant,  intends  at  the 
same  time  to  hold  fast  to  an  essential  realism,  and 
has  no  thought  of  maintaining  that  all  that  there 
is  to  the  object  is  furnished  it  from  the  perceiving 
mind.  And  for  the  further  Kantian  contention  that 
we  are  able  to  make  vahd  universal  judgments  a 

'  "  True  Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe,"  London,  edition  of  1820, 
III,  pp.  400-403. 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  275 

priori  and  that  the  ground  of  this  abihty  lies  in 
the  mind's  possession  of  certain  constitutive  con- 
cepts not  derived  from  experience,  the  pages  of  the 
"True  Intellectual  System"  are  full  of  reiterations 
of  it,  couched  in  seventeenth- century  and  Platon- 
istic  language.  "As  for  axiomatical  truths,"  says 
Cudworth,  for  example,  "  in  which  something  is 
affirmed  or  denied,  as  these  are  not  all  passions 
from  bodies  without  us  (for  what  local  motions 
could  impress  this  common  notion  upon  our  minds, 
that  things  which  agree  in  one  third,  agree  amongst 
themselves,  or  any  other?);  so  neither  are  these 
things  only  gathered  by  induction  from  repeated 
sensations.  .  .  .  Thus  Aristotle  ingeniously:  *Il 
is  evident  that  there  is  no  knowledge  (of  the  uni- 
versal theorems  of  geometry)  by  sense.  For  if  we 
could  perceive  by  sense  that  the  three  angles  of  a 
triangle  were  equal  to  two  right ;  yet  should  we  not 
rest  satisfied  in  this,  as  having  therefore  a  suflBcient 
knowledge  hereof;  but  would  seek  further  after  a 
demonstration  of  it;  sense  reaching  only  to  singu- 
lars, but  knowledge  to  universals.'  When  from 
the  universal  idea  of  a  triangle,  which  is  neither 
here  nor  there  nor  anywhere  without  our  mind, 
but  yet  hath  an  intelhgible  entity,  we  see  a  plain 
necessity,  that  its  three  angles  must  be  equal  to  two 
right,  then  do  we  know  the  truth  of  this  universal 
theorem,  and  not  before:  as  also  we  understand 
that  every  singular  triangle  (so  far  as  it  is  triLe)  hath 
this  property  in  it,  wherefore  our  knowledge  of  this, 


«76     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

and  other  like  truths,  is  not  derived  from  singulars, 
nor  do  we  arrive  to  them  by  way  of  ascent  from 
singulars  to  universals ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  hav- 
ing first  found  them  in  the  universals,  we  afterward 
descending  apply  them  to  singulars:  so  that  our 
knowledge  here  is  not  after  singular  bodies,  and 
secondarily  or  derivatively  from  them,  but  in  order 
of  nature  before  them,  and  proleptical  to  them."  ^ 

Among  the  arguments  in  Kant's  "Transcendental 
Esthetic"  by  which  he  seeks  to  establish  the  apri- 
ority of  the  Vorstellungen  of  space  and  time,  the 
only  one  that  can  be  considered  entirely  unequiv- 
ocal and  important,  the  one  which  he  himself,  in 
the  Second  Edition,  erects  into  a  separate  section 
of  his  reasoning  under  the  name  of  the  "  Transcen- 
dental Exposition,"  is  that  based  upon  the  alleged 
existence  of  indubitable  and  clearly  a  priori  judg- 
ments in  the  mathematical  sciences  and  in  the 
general  axioms  concerning  the  time-relations  of 
phenomena.  Similarly  the  Enghsh  Platonists 
habitually  rest  their  case  for  the  reality  of  a  priori 
mental  elements  chiefly  upon  the  certainty  of  the 
fundamental  propositions  of  mathematics  —  propo- 
sitions which,  because  they  are  universal,  could  not 
be  justified  upon  the  basis  of  experience.  This 
habit  in  the  Cambridge  men  is  perhaps  sufficiently 
exemplified  by  the  last  citation  from  Cudworth; 
many  more  examples  could,  however,  be  drawn 
from  that  writer  and  from  More.     The  essential 

*  "  True  Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe,"  London,  edition  of  1820, 
III,  pp.  403-405. 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  277 

argumentative  basis  for  the  apriorism  of  these 
seventeenth-century  epistemologists  was  thus 
identical  with  the  only  serious  argumentative 
basis  for  the  apriorism  of  Kant's  ''Transcendental 
^Esthetic. " 

It  is,  of  course,  true  that  these  English  Platonists 
made  no  such  definite  and  methodical  attempt  to 
discriminate  and  precisely  enumerate  the  several 
a  priori  elements  in  knowledge,  as  did  the  peculiarly 
systematic  and  taxonomic  mind  of  Kant.  Cud- 
worth  and  his  school  often  wTite  as  if  all  sorts  of 
miscellaneous  general  concepts  might  be  supposed, 
like  the  original  Platonic  Ideas,  to  exist  in  the  in- 
tellect a  priori.  This  they  certainly  did  not  really 
mean  to  affirm ;  but  they  undeniably  left  the  ques- 
tion concerning  the  exact  character  and  limits  of 
the  a  priori  as  an  unsettled  problem  for  their  suc- 
cessors to  deal  with.  Kant  must  be  said  to  have 
made  an  honest,  though  a  far  from  successful,  effort 
to  grapple  with  this  problem.  But  in  doing  so  he 
was  only  correcting  and  filling  in  the  details  of  the 
general  epistemological  scheme  which  he  shared  in 
common  with  his  English  rationalistic  predeces- 
sors ;  he  was  not  discovering  a  new  and  revolu- 
tionary philosophical  principle.  And  there  are 
numerous  indications  in  the  work  of  seventeenth- 
century  Enghsh  writers  that  they  primarily  meant 
by  their  "  proleptical "  or  a  priori  notions  those 
relational  ideas  or  categories  which  enter  into  every 
presentation  of  objects  and  make  possible  the  unity 


278     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

and  interconnectedness  of  rational  experience; 
and  there  are  occasional  rudimentary  and  tentative 
attempts  at  an  enumeration  of  these  categories. 
Thus  Henry  More:^  "Besides  this,  there  are  a 
multitude  of  relative  notions  or  ideas  in  the  mind 
of  man,  as  well  mathematical  as  logical,  which  if 
we  prove  cannot  be  the  impresses  of  any  material 
object  from  without,  it  will  necessarily  follow  that 
they  are  from  the  soul  herself  within,  and  are  the 
natural  furniture  of  human  understanding.  Such 
are  these:  Cause,  Effect,  Whole  and  Part,  Like 
and  UnHke,  Proportion  and  Analogy,  Equality 
and  Inequality,  Symmetry  and  Asymmetry,  and 
the  hke ;  all  which  relative  ideas  I  shall  easily  prove 
to  be  no  material  impresses  from  without  upon 
the  soul,  but  her  own  active  conception  proceeding 
from  herself  whilst  she  takes  notice  of  external  ob- 
jects.^'' Kant's  systematic  analysis  of  the  a  priori 
faculties  of  the  mind  seems  to  have  been  still  more 
closely  foreshadowed  in  the  *'  Organum  Vetus  et 
Novum"  (1677)  and  the  "Essay  upon  Reason  and 
the  Nature  of  Spirits  "  (1694)  of  Richard  Burthogge, 
an  Oxford  man.  But,  unhappily,  neither  of  these 
works  of  this  noteworthy  English  philosopher  ap- 
pears to  be  available  anywhere  in  the  city  of  New 
York;  and  I  am  dependent  for  information  con- 
cerning them  upon  M.  Lyon's  invaluable  study. 
If  there  be  any  reader  of  this  paper  not  acquainted 
with  M.  Lyon's  book,  I  can  only  refer  him  to  it  for 

»  "Antidote  against  Atheism,"  1655,  p.  22. 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  279 

a  too  brief  account  of  a  system  exhibiting,  in  its 
general  outlines,  a  singular  degree  of  resemblance 
to  the  theoretical  philosophy  of  Kant.  But  I  can- 
not refrain  from  including  in  the  present  compila- 
tion of  English  anticipations  of  Kant  a  passage  of 
Burthogge's  expressing  very  precisely  the  pecuHar 
type  of  the  Kantian  idealism  —  an  idealism  pri- 
marily based  upon,  and  hmited  in  its  bearings  by, 
the  epistemological  theory  of  a  'priori  mental  ele- 
ments. It  is  necessary  to  turn  this  back  into 
English  as  well  as  may  be  from  M.  Lyon's  French 
rendering.^ 

"For  us  men,"  says  Burthogge," things  are  noth- 
ing save  in  so  far  as  they  are  known  by  us,  and 
they  are  known  by  us  only  as  they  exist  in  the  sense 
or  imagination  or  thought;  in  a  word,  as  they 
exist  in  our  faculties.  .  .  .  Each  faculty  takes  a 
part,  though  not  an  exclusive  part,  in  the  produc- 
tion of  its  immediate  object;  as  the  eye  produces 
colors  and  is  said  to  see,  as  the  ear  produces 
sounds  and  the  imagination  images,  so  the  under- 
standing produces  the  ideas  or  conceptions  under 
which  it  apprehends  and  beholds  things.  So  that 
all  the  immediate  objects  of  human  thought  are 
entia  cogitationis,  or  appearances  only ;  they  being 
not  properly  and  (if  I  may  be  allowed  to  use  a 
school- term)  jormally  in  the  things  themselves 
.  .  .  but  only  in  the  faculties  of  the  intellect.'* 
This  is  pure  Kantian  (as  distinguished  from  Berke- 

'  "  L'Idealisme  en  Angleterre  au  XVIII*  si^cle,"  pp.  75,  76. 


280     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

leyan)  idealism ;  and  Burthogge  holds  fast  as  ten- 
aciously as  Kant  to  the  affirmation  of  the  real 
existence  of  things-in- themselves  behind  these 
mentally  apperceived  and  subjectively  determined 
objects  of  experience.  He  does  so,  also,  as  M. 
Lyon  points  out,  for  a  hke  reason,  and  with  a  like 
inconsequence;  he  feels  the  necessity  of  assigning 
some  extra-mental  cause  for  the  concrete,  contin- 
gent, empirical  element  in  the  content  of  sensation. 
It  is  natural  to  inquire,  at  this  point,  whether 
the  philosopher  of  Konigsberg  can  have  known 
and  in  any  degree  have  been  influenced  by  these 
Enghsh  precursors.  That  Kant  should  not  have 
read  Cudworth  would  certainly  have  been  singu- 
lar. A  Latin  translation  of  the  "True  Intellectual 
System'*  by  J.  L.  Mosheim,  a  professor  and  even- 
tually chancellor  of  the  University  of  Gottingen, 
was  pubHshed  at  Jena  in  1733,  and  a  second  edi- 
tion at  Leyden  forty  years  later ;  to  the  latter  pubh- 
cation  attention  was  called  in  Nicolai's  "  Allgemeine 
deutsche  Bibliothek"  of  the  same  year.  But,  as  I 
have  said,  Kant  was  capable  of  ignoring  to  an  ex- 
traordinary degree  —  or,  it  may  be,  of  forgetting  — 
a  large  part  of  the  philosophical  literature  of  his 
time.  If  he  had  read  and  remembered  Cudworth, 
or  any  other  writer  of  the  same  school,  he  could 
hardly  have  flattered  himself  so  complacently  as 
he  did  upon  the  entire  novelty  of  his  "  Copernican 
revolution." 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  281 


II 

The  doctrine  of  the  ideahty  of  the  world  of 
objects  in  space  and  time  rests,  in  Kant's  system, 
upon  two  supports  of  dissimilar  character  and  un- 
equal strength.  In  the  "  Transcendental  ^Esthetic  " 
it  is  a  direct  inference  from  the  theory  that  our  no- 
tions of  space  and  time  constitute  pure  percepts 
of  which  the  mind  is  in  possession  a  priori;  from 
the  epistemological  affirmation  of  the  apriority  of 
our  ideas  of  these  two  elements  of  the  world  of  our 
sensible  experience,  is  immediately  deduced  the 
metaphysical  negation  of  the  extra- mental  reahty 
of  that  worid,  so  far,  at  least,  as  its  spatial  and 
temporal  contents  are  concerned.  But  even  sup- 
posing the  arguments  offered  for  the  existence  of 
space  and  time  as  a  priori  percepts  to  be  conclusive 
—  a  point  which  it  would  be  out  of  place  to  discuss 
here  —  the  transition  from  apriority  to  ideality  is 
manifestly  something  less  than  coercive.  For  the 
transition  gets  its  sole  sanction  from  the  law  of 
parsimony;  which  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  an 
absolutely  necessary  law  of  thought.  Why  should 
not  space  or  time  be  both  an  idea  with  which  our 
mind  is  furnished  a  priori,  and  also  a  real  charac- 
ter of  the  objective  universe  of  Ding e- an- sick?  In 
the  "iEsthetic"  Kant  certainly  is  constantly  guilty 
of  the  paralogism  of  translating  the  proposition, 
"Space  is  the  subjective  form  of  the  perception 


282     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

of  phenomena  of  the  external  senses"  into  the 
proposition  "Space  is  nothing  but  the  subjective 
form  of  the  perception  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
external  senses."  To  assert  dogmatically  the  ex- 
istence of  space  on  both  sides  of  the  Kantian  an- 
tithesis of  thought  and  thing  would  perhaps  be  to 
multiply  entities  beyond  necessity.  But  the  proof 
that  such  an  hypothesis  is  not  necessary  is  not 
equivalent  to  a  proof  that  it  is  false  or  impossible 
or  absurd.  After  all  of  Kant's  reasoning  upon  this 
subject  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  **  Kritik"  one  is  left 
with  a  fairly  open  option  between  two  perfectly 
conceivable  hypotheses,  namely :  Space  and  time 
are  exclusively  subjective  forms;  or,  Space  and 
time  are  at  once  subjective  forms  and  objective 
reahties.  The  latter  hypothesis  is  the  less  simple 
of  the  two,  it  is  less  in  conformity  with  the  maxim 
known  as  "  Ockham's  razor " ;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  it  seems  more  natural  and  more  congen- 
ial to  the  human  intellect.  Consequently,  though 
admitting  the  validity  of  every  one  of  Kant's 
reasonings  in  the  "Transcendental  ^Esthetic, " 
a  fair  observer  of  the  situation  could  hardly  say 
more  than  that,  at  the  end  of  that  part  of  the  dis- 
cussion, the  conflict  between  critical  idealism  and 
physical  realism  had  issued  in  a  draw. 

But  in  the  "Transcendental  Antithetic"  Kant 
brings  forward  an  argument  for  his  sort  of  idealism 
that  has  much  greater  pretensions  to  compulsive- 
ness  and  conclusiveness.      In  the  first  and  second 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  283 

antinomies  and  the  "critical  solution  of  the  con- 
flict of  reason  with  itself"  in  those  cosmological 
problems,  he  undertakes  to  show  that  the  assertion 
of  the  objective  reahty  of  the  spatial  and  temporal 
world  is,  not  simply  superfluous,  but  absurd  and 
self-contradictory.  For  —  as  the  familiar  argument 
runs  —  so  long  as  we  think  of  space  and  time  as 
really  existing  things  we  can,  with  perfect  logic, 
prove  either  to  be  both  infinite  and  finite  in  extent, 
both  infinitely  divided  and  incapable  of  infinite 
division.  For  the  realist  there  is  no  escape  from 
this  paradox.  Only  transcendental  idealism  can 
make  clear  at  once  the  origin  and  the  solution  of 
this  apparent  self-contradiction  and  self-stultifi- 
cation of  the  human  understanding.  *'  If  we  regard 
the  two  statements  that  the  world  is  infinite  in  ex- 
tension, and  that  the  world  is  finite  in  extension,  as 
contradictory  opposites,  we  assume  that  the  world 
is  a  thing  in  itself;'*  and  from  this  assumption  the 
whole  absurdity  arises.  "But  if  we  remove  this 
supposition,  or  transcendental  illusion,  and  deny 
that  the  world  is  a  thing  in  itself,  then  the  con- 
tradictory opposition  of  the  two  statements  becomes 
purely  dialectical,  and  as  the  world  does  not  exist 
by  itself  (independently  of  the  regressive  series  of 
my  representations),  it  exists  neither  as  a  whole  by 
itself  infinite^  nor  as  a  whole  by  itself  finite.'*  In 
short,  "the  antinomy  of  pure  reason  with  regard 
to  its  cosmological  ideas  is  removed  by  showing 
that  it  is  ...  an  illusion  produced  by  our  apply- 


284     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

ing  the  idea  of  absolute  totality,  which  exists  only 
as  a  condition  of  things  by  themselves,  to  phenom- 
ena, which  exist  in  our  representation  only.  .  .  . 
We  may,  however,  derive  from  that  antinomy  a 
true  .  .  .  advantage,  namely,  by  proving  through 
it  indirectly  the  transcendental  ideality  of  phenom- 
ena, in  case  anyone  should  not  have  been  satisfied 
by  the  direct  proof  given  in  the  'Transcendental 
x^sthetic. '  The  proof  would  consist  in  the  following 
dilemma :  If  the  world  is  a  whole  existing  by  itself, 
it  is  either  finite  or  infinite.  Now  the  former  as  well 
as  the  latter  proposition  is  false,  as  has  been  shown 
by  the  proofs  given  in  the  antithesis  on  one  and 
in  the  thesis  on  the  other  side.  It  is  false,  there- 
fore, that  the  world  is  a  whole  existing  by  itself. 
Hence  it  follows  that  phenomena  iiberhaupt  are 
nothing  outside  our  representations."  This  argu- 
ment Kant  —  who  never  recognized  the  obvious 
limitations  of  the  arguments  in  the  "  Transcendental 
^Esthetic"  —  advances  as  a  subsidiary  rather  than 
as  the  main  proof  for  his  transcendental  idealism. 
But  it  is  apparent,  from  what  has  already  been  said, 
that  it  is  really  the  only  argument  that  has  any  claim 
to  be  regarded  as  commensurate  with  the  thing  to 
be  proven.  The  other  leg  of  Kant's  reasoning,  so 
to  say,  is  visibly  too  short  to  reach  up  to  the  con- 
clusion that  it  is  designed  to  support. 

Now,  just  this  argument  from  the  antinomies 
respecting  the  infinity  and  infinite  divisibihty  of 
space  to  an  ideaHstic  conclusion,  had  been  clearly, 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  285 

and  a  good  deal  more  simply,  set  forth  by  Arthur 
ColHer  in  his  "Clavis  Universalis"  (1713).  As  that 
remarkable  work  of  the  earhest  ^  Enghsh  ideahst 
is  less  familiar  and  less  accessible  than  it  should  be, 
I  reproduce  with  some  fulness  the  passages  in 
which   Colher  anticipates  Kant.' 

The  "third  argument"  in  the  "Clavis"  for  the 
ideahty  of  the  external  world  is  as  follows:  "An 
external  world  whose  extension  is  absolute,  that  is, 
not  relatively  depending  on  any  faculty  of  percep- 
tion, has  (in  my  opinion)  such  a  repugnancy  in  its 
extension  as  actually  destroys  the  being  of  the 
subject- world.  The  repugnancy  is  this,  that  it  is, 
or  must  be,  both  finite  and  infinite.  Accordingly, 
then,  I  argue  thus :  That  which  is  both  finite  and 
infinite  in  extent  is  absolutely  non-existent,  or 
there  is,  or  can  be,  no  such  world ;  or  thus,  an  ex- 

*  Berkeley's  "Principles  of  Human  Knowledge"  was  published  in  1710. 
But  an  earlier  draft  of  Collier's  argument  has  been  found,  dating  from  1708 
(see  LesUe  Stephen,  s.  v.,  in  "Dictionary  of  National  Biography");  and 
Collier  himself  speaks  of  ha\'ing  waited  ten  years  before  publishing  his  new 
theories.  There  appears  to  be  no  evidence  of  Berkeley's  having  hit  upon  his 
doctrine  before  170.5.  If  our  histories  of  philosophy  were  as  solicitous  to  be 
historical  as  they  are  to  be  philosophical,  the  name  of  Colher  would  be  coupled 
with  that  of  Berkeley  as  constantly  and  closely  as  is  the  name  of  Leibniz  with 
that  of  Newton  in  the  history  of  mathematics,  the  name  of  Wallace  with  that 
of  Darwin  in  the  history  of  biolog}',  the  name  of  Adams  with  that  of  Leverrier 
in  the  history  of  planetary  astronomy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  Windelband's 
"  History  of  Philosophy  "  the  date  of  Collier's  book  is  given  wrongly  (English 
tr.,  p.  471),  and  the  simultaneity  of  the  two  "discoveries"  of  idealism  is  not 
pointed  out ;  in  Ueberweg  Colher  is  incorrectly  said  to  have  been  influenced 
by  Berkeley;  and  in  Hotlding  there  is  to  be  found  no  mention  of  Collier 
at  all. 

•  Citations  are  from  the  edition  of  the  "  Clavis  Universalis "  in  Parr's 
*'  Metaphysical  Tracts  by  English  Philosophers  of  the  Eighteenth  Centurj-," 
London,  1837. 


286     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

tent  or  expansion  which  is  both  finite  and  infinite 
is  neither  finite  nor  infinite,  that  is,  is  no  expansion 
at  all.  But  this  is  the  case  of  an  external  expansion, 
ergOy  there  is,  or  can  be,  no  such  expansion." 

Collier  then  dilates  upon  the  self-evidence  of  the 
two  essential  premises  of  this  reasoning,  and  con- 
tinues: "As  to  the  form  and  manner  of  this  argu- 
ment, it  has  first  evidently  this  to  plead  for  itself, 
that  there  is  nothing  in  its  conclusion  but  what  is 
in  the  premises ;  which  shews  it  to  be  no  fallacy 
but  a  just  and  legal  argument.  And  also  this, 
secondly,  that  it  is  exactly  parallel  with  several 
arguments  which  I  could  name,  allowed  by  all  to 
be  good  and  perfectly  demonstrative.  As  for  in- 
stance, suppose  a  man  should  advance  the  notion 
of  a  triangular  square.  Or  suppose  two  persons 
contending  about  the  attributes  of  this  strange  idea : 
one  arguing  from  the  idea  of  triangle,  that  it  has 
but  three  angles ;  and  the  other  contending  that  it 
must  have  four,  from  the  idea  of  a  square;  what 
could  any  reasonable  stander-by  conclude  from 
this,  but  that  the  thing  they  are  disputing  about  is 
nothing  at  all,  even  an  impossibility  or  contradic- 
tion? Nay,  the  disputants  themselves  must  needs 
close  in  with  this  manner  of  arguing,  and  that  on 
two  accounts. 

"First,  in  that  this  manner  of  arguing  accom- 
modates the  difference  between  them,  and  salves 
the  honor  of  both.  For  by  this,  both  appear  to 
be  in  the  right  in  the  precise  points  they  are  con- 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  287 

tending  for;  and  wrong  only  in  something  which 
they  are  both  equally  concerned  for,  viz.,  the  sup- 
position of  the  being  of  a  triangular  square,  which 
is  the  thing  supposed  by  consent  between  them. 
But  chiefly,  secondly,  in  that  the  person  who  argues 
in  this  manner  must  be  compelled  to  have  the  law 
of  reason  on  his  side,  and  may  compel  them,  on  their 
own  principles,  to  assent  to  his  conclusion.  This  is 
done  by  granting  to  each  party  his  point,  namely, 
that  a  triangular  square  is  both  triangular  and 
quadrangular.  This  done,  they  have  nothing  to 
do  but  to  answer  each  other's  arguments,  which  it 
is  here  supposed  they  cannot  do.  By  this,  there- 
fore, each  grants  the  other  to  be  in  the  right.  So 
that  for  a  stander-by  to  grant  both  to  be  in  the 
right  is,  in  this  case,  a  demonstration  that  they  are 
both  in  the  wrong;  or  in  other  words,  that  the 
thing  they  are  disputing  about  is  nothing  at  all.  I 
have  mentioned  this  possible,  rather  than  any  actual^ 
instance  of  this  kind,  because  I  would  give  an  in- 
stance wherein  I  may  be  sure  to  have  every  one  on 
my  side.  For  certainly  no  one  can  doubt  whether 
this  be  a  good  argument  or  not : 

"A  figure  which  is  both  triangular  and  quad- 
rangular is  not  at  all. 

But  this  is  the  case  of  a  triangular  square. 

Ergo,  there  is  no  such  figure." 
Precisely  parallel  to  this,  then,  Colher  observes, 
is  the  argument  concerning  the  external  world,  as 
thus : 


288     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

"A  world  which  is  both  finite  and  infinite  is 
not  at  all. 

But  this  is  the  case  of  an  external  world. 

Ergo,  there  is  no  such  world." 
Similar  is  Collier's  "fourth  argument."  "From 
the  maximum  I  come  to  the  minimum  naturale;  or 
to  the  question  about  the  divisibility  of  matter, 
quantity,  or  extension.  And  here  I  affirm  in  like 
manner  as  before,  that  external  matter  is  both 
finitely  and  infinitely  divisible;  and,  consequently, 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  external  matter." 

This  idealism  of  Collier's  —  all  of  the  arguments 
for  which  are  more  to  the  point  than  any  of  Kant's 
except  those  which  the  "  Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunf  t " 
has  in  common  with  the  "  Clavis  Universalis  "  —  is, 
he  is  careful  to  point  out,  not  to  be  understood  as  a 
denial  of  the  empirical  reality  or  even  of  the  phe- 
nomenal externality  of  that  general  and  collective 
object  of  sense,  a  natural  world.  "Let  the  mean- 
est of  my  readers  be  my  witness,  that  I  have  been 
so  far  from  doubting  of  anything  of  this  that  I  have 
even  contended  on  all  occasions  that  nothing  is,  or 
can  be,  more  evident  than  the  existence  of  bodies,  or 
of  a  sensible  world.  .  .  .  Not  the  existence  but  the 
extra- existence  of  the  sensible  world  is  the  point  I 
have  been  arguing  against.  And  that,  not  a  natural, 
supposed  to  be  a  sensible^  but  an  external  world,  as 
such,  is  impossible."  ^ 

^  M.  Lyon  has  pointed  out  (more  briefly)  the  similarity  between  these  sec- 
tions of  the  "  Clavis  Universalis  "  and  the  Kantian  antinomies  {op.  cit.,  pp, 
262,  263) ;  but  by  others  the  point  appears  to  have  been  usually  ignored. 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  289 

The  same  general  line  of  argument  in  behalf  of 
ideahsm  was  simultaneously  occurring  to  the  mind 
of  Berkeley ;  it  is  by  him  expressed  in  §§  47,  123- 
134  of  the  "  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge."  But 
Berkeley  is  far  from  bringing  out  the  essential  point 
and  the  precise  logical  character  of  the  argument 
from  the  antinomies  so  clearly  and  unmistakably 
as  does  ColHer;  and  the  form  of  his  reasoning 
resembles  that  of  Kant  much  less  closely.  The  para- 
doxes about  infinite  extension  and  infinite  divisi- 
bihty  are,  in  themselves,  of  course,  a  very  ancient 
heritage  of  European  philosophy,  going  back  at  all 
events  to  Zeno  of  Elea.  But  Collier  appears  to  have 
been  the  first  modern  to  whom  it  occurred  to  use 
them  as  a  decisive  argument  against  physical  real- 
ism in  precisely  the  Kantian  manner.  The  ques- 
tion here  again  naturally  suggests  itself,  whether 
Kant  can  have  consciously  or  unconsciously  de- 
rived the  suggestion  of  his  own  antinomic  rea- 
soning for  the  transcendental  ideality  of  time  and 
space  from  the  English  ideahst.  That  Kant  should 
have  been  acquainted  with  the  "  Clavis  Universalis  " 
is  by  no  means  impossible,  since  a  German  trans- 
lation of  it,  together  with  Berkeley's  "  Dialogues," 
was  brought  out  in  1756  by  C.  E.  Eschenbach,  a 
physician  of  contemporary  celebrity,  then  pro- 
fessor of  mathematics,  and  later  of  anatomy,  at 
Rostock.  If  Kant  failed  to  improve  this  oppor- 
tunity —  he  had,  of  course,  little  or  no  English  — 
to  become  better  acquainted  with  the  much-dis- 

19 


290     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

cussed  reasonings  of  these  English  speculators, 
he  certainly  fell  somewhat  short  of  his  professional 
obligations.  But  the  probability  is  against  his 
having  received  any  influence  or  suggestion  from 
Collier;  for  one  thing,  it  apparently  was  not  until 
the  year  1769  that  (in  the  words  of  Adickes  ^) 
*'the  problem  of  the  antinomies,  and  his  solution 
of  that  problem,  brought  about  the  change  in 
Kant's  views  concerning  space  and  time."  We 
have  here,  probably,  not  a  case  of  borrowing,  but 
merely  one  of  anticipation.^ 

1  In  his  "  Kant-Studien, "  p.  122. 

*  Kant  might  also  have  learned  these  ideas  nearer  home.  In  the  assertion 
of  the  ideaUty  of  space  he  had,  of  com-se,  several  precursors  in  Grermany.  Leib- 
niz had  explicitly  denied  the  existence  of  space  as  a  real  thing  —  as  anything 
more  than  a  "  confused  "  representation  of  the  mere  relation  of  co-existence 
between  unextended  entities.  Maupertuis,  President  of  the  Berlin  Academy 
of  Sciences,  had  maintained  (in  his  Lettres,  before  1752,  German  translation, 
1753)  that  "  r4tendue  n'est  rien  de  plus  qu'un  phSnomene  "  ;  and  before  the 
middle  of  the  century  the  doctrine  had  become  so  much  of  a  commonplace 
in  Germany  that  Euler  thought  it  necessary  to  devote  one  of  his  communi- 
cations to  the  Academy  to  the  refutation  of  those  metaphysicians  who  asserted 
that  "  les  idAes  de  I'espace  et  du  temps  n'ont  aucune  rialiU  "  and  that  these 
ideas  "n'existent  que  dans  noire  entendement"  (Hist,  de  I'Acad.  Roy.  des 
Sciences,  BerUn,  1748,  pp.  324-333).  But  the  reader  of  Kant  alone  would 
be  likely  to  suppose  this  doctrine  to  be  a  peculiar  and  original  discovery  of 
the  Konigsberger  himself.  Yet  even  in  the  antinomic  argument  for  it  he 
had  German  as  well  as  Enghsh  predecessors  —  though  none  come  so  close 
as  Collier  to  Kant's  own  way  of  putting  it.  Leibniz  had  repeatedly  urged 
that  the  only  escape  from  the  difficulties  about  infinite  divisibihty  lay  in  the 
recognition  of  the  phenomenality  of  space ;  and  Maupertuis  had,  as  one  evi- 
dence of  the  truth  of  his  contention,  pointed  to  "  the  great  embarrassments 
into  which  we  fall,  when  we  attempt  to  carry  extension  out  to  infinity,  or  to 
decompose  it  into  its  ultimate  elements." 


ARTHUR   O.  LOVEJOY  291 

III 

It  is  well  known  that  out  of  the  conceptions  and 
the  dialectic  implicit  in  Kant's  theory  of  knowledge 
there  was  presently  evolved  a  new  type  of  specula- 
tive metaphysics  and  theology,  which,  in  several 
forms,  has  had  especial  vogue  and  influence  in 
England  and  America.  Its  most  general  and  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  is  that  it  finds  the  basis 
for  an  idealistic  and  (more  or  less  frankly)  monistic 
rational  theology  directly  in  the  nature  and  pre- 
suppositions of  knowledge  as  such;  it  rests  its  ar- 
gument for  the  existence  of  God,  or  an  Absolute 
Mind,  exclusively  upon  epistemological  considera- 
tions of  the  Kantian  type.  By  a  species  of  reason- 
ing a  fortiori,  it  concludes  that  since,  as  Kant  had 
insisted,  the  world  of  experience  as  a  coherent  sys- 
tem of  rationally  interrelated  objects  is  possible 
for  me  only  in  so  far  as  its  content  subsists  and  is 
categorized  within  the  unity  of  my  mind  —  which 
provides  the  synthetizing  system  of  spatial,  tem- 
poral, and  other  relations  but  is  itself  something 
more  than  a  term  of  those  relations  —  so  the  whole 
of  reality,  including  all  finite  minds,  can  be  con- 
ceived only  as  subsisting  within  the  unity  of  a  single, 
all- comprehending,  self-determining,  and  com- 
pletely rational  Eternal  Mind  or  Absolute  Experi- 
ence. Now,  a  mode  of  theological  reasoning  and 
a  type  of  theological  conclusion  pretty  closely  analo- 
gous to  this  is  characteristic  of  the  philosophy  of 


292     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

the  Cambridge  and  Oxford  Platonists  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  It  appears,  as  it  does  in  different 
English  metaphysicians  of  the  neo- Kantian  school, 
with  varying  degrees  of  definiteness,  with  unequal 
degrees  of  frankness  in  regard  to  the  monistic  or 
pantheistic  tendency  of  it,  and  with  different  ways 
of  carrying  through  the  one  general  sort  of  dialec- 
tic common  to  the  whole  group.  It  is,  in  fact, 
possible  to  find  fairly  exact  (though,  of  course, 
relatively  crude)  counterparts  to  three  distinguish- 
able varieties  of  latter-day  Kantian  metaphysics  — 
the  varieties,  namely,  represented  by  Green,  Royce, 
and  Bradley  —  in  three  of  our  Platonists,  respec- 
tively, Cudworth,  Norris,  and  CoHier. 

1.  Readers  of  Thomas  Hill  Green  have  gener- 
ally found  his  language  concerning  the  precise 
ontological  relations  of  the  Eternal  Consciousness 
to  finite  minds  somewhat  obscure  and  elusive ;  but 
have  found  him  clear,  at  all  events,  in  insisting  that 
even  our  human  cognition  directly  presupposes,  and 
that  its  possibility  becomes  fully  conceivable  only 
through,  the  mediation  of  an  Eternal  Conscious- 
ness in  whose  nature  and  whose  knowledge  we 
(just  because  we  are  capable  of  a  mode  of  insight 
transcending  the  temporal  and  contingent  flux  of 
sense- presentations)  somehow  participate.  Cud- 
worth  seems  to  me  to  be  clear  and  to  be  elusive 
upon  substantially  the  same  points.  "Human 
knowledge  and  understanding  itself,"  he  says  (re- 
suming the  epistemological  reasoning  cited  earlier 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  293 

in  this  paper),  "is  not  the  mere  image  and  creature 
of  singular  bodies  only;  and  so  derivative  and 
ectypal  from  them  and  in  order  of  nature  junior  to 
them,  but,  as  it  were,  hovering  aloft  over  the  cor- 
poreal universe,  it  is  a  thing  independent  upon  sin- 
ular  bodies,  or  proleptical  to  them,  and  in  order  of 
nature  before  them.  But  what  account  can  we 
then  possibly  give  of  knowledge  and  understand- 
ing, their  nature  and  original  ?  since  there  must  be 
vorjTou,  that  which  is  inteUigible,  in  order  of  nature 
before  voiqcri^,  or  intellection.  Certainly,  no  other 
than  this,  that  the  first  original  of  knowledge  is  that 
of  a  perfect  being,  comprehending  .  .  .  the  possibil- 
ities of  all  things;  their  ideas  with  their  several  re- 
lations to  one  another;  all  necessary  and  immutable 
truths.  Here,  therefore,  is  a  knowledge  before  the 
world  and  all  sensible  things,  that  was  archetypal 
and  paradigmatical  to  the  same.  Of  which  one 
perfect  mind  and  knowledge  all  other  imperfect 
minds  {being  derived  from  it),  have  a  certain  parti- 
cipation.''^  "It  is  evident  that  there  can  be  but 
one  only  original  mind,  or  no  more  than  one  un- 
derstanding being  self-existent;  all  other  minds 
whatsoever  partaking  of  one  original  mind;  and 
being,  as  it  were,  stamped  with  the  impression  or 
signature  of  one  and  the  same  seal.  From  whence 
it  Cometh  to  pass  that  all  minds,  in  the  several 
places  and  ages  of  the  world,  have  ideas  or  notions 
of  things  exactly  alike,  and  truths  indivisibly  the 
same.     Truths  are  not  multiplied  by  the  diversity  of 

'  Cudworth,  op.  cit.,  p.  406. 


294     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

the  minds  that  apprehend  them;  because  they  are 
all  but  ectypal  participations  of  one  and  the  same 
original  mind  and  truth.  As  the  same  face  may  be 
reflected  in  several  glasses ;  and  the  image  of  the 
same  sun  may  be  in  a  thousand  eyes  at  once  behold- 
ing it;  and  one  and  the  same  voice  may  be  in  a 
thousand  ears  listening  to  it ;  so  when  innumerable 
created  minds  have  the  same  ideas  of  things,  and 
understand  the  same  truths,  it  is  but  one  and  the 
same  eternal  light  that  is  reflected  in  them  all 
('  that  light  which  enlighteneth  every  man  that  com- 
eth  into  the  world') ;  or  the  same  voice  of  that  one 
everlasting  Word,  that  is  never  silent,  re-echoed  by 
them.  .  .  .  We  conclude  therefore  that  from  the 
nature  of  mind  and  knowledge  it  is  demonstrable 
that  there  can  be  but  one  original  and  self-existent 
mind,  or  understanding  being,  from  which  all  other 
minds  were  derived."  ^ 

Recurrent,  similarly,  in  the  writings  of  the  Cam- 
bridge school  is  the  observation  that  this  ultimate 
Knower,  this  archetypal  and  perfect  Mind,  must 
transcend  the  ordinary  duahty  of  thought  and 
thing,  must  be  at  once  subject  and  object  of  thought, 
by  existing  for  itself  as  its  own  object.  This  prin- 
ciple of  Platonistic  theology,  which  goes  back  to 
Plotinus,  if  not,  indeed,  to  Aristotle,  is,  as  everyone 
knows,  another  of  the  commonplaces  of  the  philoso- 
phy of  those  recent  English  schools  whose  lineage 
is  usually  traced  through  Hegel  back  to  Kant. 

*  Cudworth,  op.  cit.,  pp.  415,  416. 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  295 

2.  In  the  second  part  of  a  remarkable  early 
work  of  Professor  Royce's,  "  The  Religious  Aspect 
of  Philosophy,"  there  is  set  forth  an  interesting 
variant  of  the  general  neo- Kantian  or  epistemo- 
logical  type  of  argument  for  the  existence  of  God. 
This  argument  undertakes  to  show  that  the  very 
admission  of  the  distinction  between  truth  and 
error  in  judgments  —  an  admission  to  which  even 
the  most  determined  sceptic  stands  committed  — 
directly  implies  the  affirmation  of  the  existence  of 
an  objective  and  eternal  standard  of  truth  to  which 
all  judgments  by  their  very  nature  aim  to  conform ; 
and  that  this  standard  can  be  inteUigibly  conceived 
only  if  it  be  represented  as  an  all-knowing  and 
eternal  Mind,  which  possesses  and  perfectly  ap- 
prehends at  once  the  judgment  and  the  "reahty,'* 
or  the  truth  at  which  the  judgment  aims.  The 
skeleton  of  an  epistemological  argument  for  theism 
which  assuredly  belongs  to  the  same  genus,  though 
it  is  far  removed  from  the  dialectical  subtlety  and 
the  felicitous  expression  of  Professor  Royce's  rea- 
soning, is  to  be  found  in  John  Norris's  "Meta- 
physical Essay  towards  the  Demonstration  of  a 
God  from  the  steady  and  immutable  Nature  of 
Truth "^  (1687).  To  Norris  himself  his  hue  of 
argument  seemed  an  essentially  new  mode  of  proof. 
"Whether,"  he  writes,  "this  procedure  of  mine  be 
entirely  new  or  no,  't  is  not  possible  (without  ex- 
amining all  the  books  in  the  world)  absolutely  to 

'  Contained  in  Norris's  "  Collection  of  Miscellanies, "  edition  of  1717,  pp. 
144-152. 


296     KANT  AND  THE  PLATONISTS 

determine.  This  much  I  believe  I  may  venture  to 
say,  that  *t  is  nowhere  universally  received,  nor 
by  any  that  I  know  of,  industriously  and  profess- 
edly managed ;  and  that,  lastly,  't  is  as  new  as  the 
matter  will  now  afford,  and  consequently  as  any 
man  in  reason  ought  to  expect."  The  argument, 
somewhat  condensed,  runs  thus:  Knowledge  is 
"truth  of  the  subject,"  and  presupposes  "truth  of 
the  object";  without  the  latter  "there  can  be  no 
such  thing  as  knowledge."  Now,  truth  of  the  ob- 
ject, in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  here  used,  consists 
in  "  certain  habitudes  or  relations  of  things  towards 
one  another,  whether  affirmatively  or  negatively." 
Of  these  relations,  "some  are  steady,  immutable, 
that  never  were  made  by  any  understanding  or  will, 
nor  can  ever  be  unmade  or  nuU'd  by  them.  .  .  . 
Now,  't  is  a  proposition  of  necessary  and  eternal 
truth,  that  there  must  be  ever  such  a  thing  as  truth, 
or  that  something  must  be  true;  for  let  it  be  af- 
firmed or  denied,  truth  thrusts  in  upon  us  either 
way.  And  so,  secondly,  there  are  many  particular 
propositions  of  eternal  and  unchangeable  verity, 
as  in  Logic,  .  .  .  Physics,  .  .  .  Metaphysics,  .  .  . 
Mathematics.  .  .  .  These  and  such  like  are  stand- 
ing and  irrepealable  truths,  .  .  .  and  such  as  all 
intellectual  operations  do  not  make  but  presup- 
pose ;  it  being  as  much  against  the  nature  of  under- 
standing to  make  that  truth  which  it  speculates, 
as  *t  is  against  the  nature  of  the  eye  to  create  that 
light  by  which  it  sees."    Now  since  the  simple  es- 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  297 

sences  to  which  these  eternal  relations  belong  must, 
accordingly,  somewhere  and  somehow  exist,  and  in 
a  corresponding  eternal  manner,  and  since  they 
can  be  seen  not  to  do  so  "in  their  natural  subsist- 
ences, it  follows  that  they  must  be  eternal  in  their 
ideal  subsistences  or  realities.  For  there  are  but 
two  conceivable  ways  how  anything  may  be  sup- 
posed to  subsist,  either  naturally  or  ideally,  either 
out  of  all  understanding  or  within  some  under- 
standing.'* So,  "if  the  simple  essences  of  things 
do  exist  eternally,  but  not  out  of  all  understand- 
ing, it  remains  that  they  must  have  their  existence  in 
some  understanding.  Without  which,  indeed,  it  is 
not  possible  to  conceive  how  they  should  have  any 
such  existence."  It  follows,  then,  "that  there  is  a 
mind  or  understanding  eternally  existing  which  is 
omniscient  and  .  .  .  universally  representative  of 
all  other  beings'*  —  which  "can  be  no  other  than 
that  eternal  mind  which  we  call  God."  Norris  in 
concluding  offers  a  distinction  whereby  he  may 
obviate  a  certain  difficulty  in  this  reasoning  —  one 
that,  as  the  ingenious  reader  will  easily  remark,  at- 
taches, in  a  shghtly  different  form  to  more  modern 
versions  of  the  argument.  "Whereas  in  the  third 
section  [of  Norris's  essay]  it  was  asserted  that  the 
nature  of  truth  is  steady  and  immutable,  and  such 
as  has  no  precarious  existence  or  arbitrarious  de- 
pendence upon  any  understanding  whatever;  and 
yet  in  the  fifth  section  't  is  affirmed  that  it  owes  its 
existence  to  some  mind  or  other;   lest  one  part  of 


298     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

this  meditation  be  thought  to  clash  against  an- 
other, I  thought  it  requisite  to  adjust  this  seem- 
ing contradiction.  For  the  clearing  of  which  we 
must  be  beholding  to  that  distinction  of  a  Platonic 
author,  of  the  divine  mind  into  vovs  voepo?  and 
vov?  vo7]t6<s,  conceptive  and  exhibitive.  Truth  does 
by  no  means  depend  upon  any  mind  as  conceptive, 
whether  human  or  divine,  but  is  supposed  by  it. 
But  upon  mind  as  exhibitive  it  may  and  does  ulti- 
mately depend ;  so  that  if  there  were  no  God  of  eter- 
nal mind,  there  could  be  no  truth.'* 

Imperfectly  worked  out  though  this  argument 
of  Norris's  is,  limited  as  it  is  by  its  Platonic  ante- 
cedents, it  seems  to  me  palpably  to  contain  the  ger- 
minal principle  of  the  reasoning  which  Professor 
Royce  has  summed  up  in  these  words  :  "All  reality 
must  be  present  to  the  Unity  of  the  Infinite 
Thought.  For  all  reality  is  reality  because  true 
judgments  can  be  made  about  it.  And  all  reality, 
for  the  same  reason,  can  be  the  object  of  false 
judgments.  Therefore  ...  all  things  actual  and 
possible  exist  as  they  exist  and  are  known  for 
what  they  are,  in  and  to  the  absolute  thought." 
For  this  "Infinite  Actuality  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  constitute  the  relation  of  truth  and  error. 
Without  it  there  is  no  truth  or  error  possible.  .  .  . 
Our  thought  needs  the  Infinite  Thought  in  order 
that  it  may  get,  through  this  infinite  judge,  the 
privilege  of  being  so  much  as  even  an  error."  ^ 

'  Royce,  "  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,"  1897,  pp.  433,  427. 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  299 

The  broadest  difference  between  the  earher  and  the 
contemporary  dialectician  is  that  the  former  (ex- 
cept in  his  sweeping  final  sentence)  limits  his 
argument  to  establishing  the  necessity  of  the  pres- 
ence of  the  eternal  truths  to  the  Divine  Mind. 
But  this  was  only  because  he  failed  to  see  (what 
a  Platonist,  of  all  men,  might  be  expected  to 
insist  upon)  that  the  truth  of  all  propositions, 
contingent  and  empirical  as  well  as  "eternal" 
and  axiomatic  ones,  may  be  regarded  as  an  eter- 
nal or  non- temporal  reality,  though  the  matters 
referred  to  by  the  former  sort  of  propositions  be 
not  so. 

3.  In  Collier's  "  A  Specimen  of  True  Philosophy  '* 
(1730)  one  finds  a  surprisingly  neat  summary  of 
the  post- Kantian  argument  for  absolute  or  mon- 
istic idealism,  and  at  the  same  time  an  example  of 
the  eventual  transformation  of  the  Absolute  of  such 
idealism  into  an  essentially  incomprehensible  type 
of  entity,  in  which  the  relations  and  distinctions 
characteristic  of  human,  discursive  thinking  are 
"  transmuted  "  into  something,  one  knows  not  what. 
It  is  because  of  the  latter  trait  of  his  ontology 
that  I  have  hkened  Collier  to  Mr.  Bradley.^  The 
passage  is  as  follows:  "When  I  here  affirm  on 
the  foundation  of  what  I  have  elsewhere  proved, 
that  the  visible  or  material  world,  which  I,  for 
instance,  see,  exists  in  me,  or  in  my  particular 
mind,  I  mean  only  to  say  that  my  mind  is  the  im- 

'  "  A  Specimen  of  True  Philosophy,"  reprinted  in  Parr's  "  Metaphysical 
Tracts,"  pp.  116-1^1. 


300     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

mediate  *^px^  ^^  substance  of  the  object  perceived ; 
or  that  the  visible  world  which  I  see  exists  immedi- 
ately in  my  particular  soul.  And,  therefore,  where 
it  is  said  that  heaven  and  earth,  or  the  said  visible 
world,  exists  in  the  Son  of  God,  the  meaning  can 
be  no  other  than  this,  that  the  said  visible  world 
exists  mediately  or  ultimately  in  the  same  divine 
Person ;  which  is  the  same  again,  as  if  it  had  been 
said  that,  as  the  visible  world  exists  immediately 
in  any  human  or  created  mind,  so  the  said  mind 
itself  exists  immediately  in  the  Son  of  God.  .  .  . 
Here,  then,  we  have  a  true  picture  given  us  of  all 
creaturely  existence ;  that  it  is  not  existence  simply, 
but  only  inexistence.  ...  A  creature,  as  such,  is 
not  capable  of  being  made,  that  is,  simply  of  exist- 
ing, but  only  of  inexisting.  ...  In  a  word,  we  have 
seen  that  the  world  or  species  of  matter  exists  in  the 
world  or  species  called  mind  or  spirit ;  and  that  this 
last  exists  in  a  third,  as  essentially  different  from 
the  last  as  it  is  from  the  first ;  notwithstanding  that 
he  has  condescended  to  be  called  our  brother." 
But  "the  nearer  any  being  or  substance  stands 
related  by  inexistence  to  the  first  substance  of  all, 
the  'A/)x>?  of  the  whole  creation,  so  much  the  more 
perfect  or  excellent  it  is."  Thus  the  human  mind 
is  more  nearly  representative  of  the  Absolute  Re- 
ality in  which  it  is  included  than  is  the  material 
universe,  which  is  included  wholly  in  mind  or 
conscious  experience;  but  the  Absolute  and  all- 
inclusive  whole  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  the 


ARTHUR  O.  LOVEJOY  301 

distinguishing  peculiarities  and  limitations  of  a 
finite  and  discursive  mind. 

One  might  go  far  before  finding  a  better  summary 
than  is  prophetically  given  in  this  writing  of  1730, 
of  the  outlines  and  main  vicissitudes  of  the  whole 
history  of  post-Kantian  idealism.  Here  is  the  a 
fortiori  inference  from  the  necessity  of  conceiving 
all  objects  of  experience  as  subsisting  in,  and  as 
determined  by,  the  synthetic  unity  of  the  individual 
human  mind,  to  the  necessity  of  conceiving  all 
minds  and  their  contents  as  correspondingly  in- 
cluded in  the  unity  of  one  Universal  Mind;  here 
is  the  effort  to  discriminate  within  this  scheme 
comparative  "degrees  of  truth  and  reahty";  and 
here,  not  less,  is  the  fatal  tendency  of  this  sort  of 
epistemological  idealistic  monism  to  evanescence 
into  an  ultimate  metaphysical  scepticism,  to  an 
hypostasis  of  an  essentially  unknowable  sub- 
stance; to,  in  short,  the  "disappearance  of  reality.'* 
Colher  gives  in  a  few  words  a  proleptic  outline  sketch 
of  the  future  development  of  this  entire  type  of  phil- 
osophical tendency  among  the  successors  of  Kant; 
he  also  gives  us  what  is  perhaps  a  warning  hint  of 
its  ultimate  and  unhappy  historic  destiny. 

In  general,  however,  what  one  finds,  on  compar- 
ing Kant  and  his  successors  with  these  earlier  spec- 
ulators, is  not  identity  of  doctrine,  but  the  sort  of 
resemblance  which  an  ancestor  might  be  expected 
to  bear  to  a  descendant.  It  would  perhaps  be  too 
much  to  call  these  English  Platonists  Kantians; 


302     KANT  AND   THE  PLATONISTS 

but  it  is  quite  accurate  to  call  Kant  the  con- 
tinuer  of  the  modern  Platonic  tradition  of  which 
these  English  philosophers  were  the  Early  Fathers. 
It  will  appear  to  some  no  great  demerit  in  these 
seventeenth-century  thinkers  that  they  plainly  ex- 
hibit, and  even  proudly  acknowledge,  their  own 
intellectual  ancestry.  Kant,  on  the  contrary, 
usually  has  very  much  the  air  of  a  philosophical 
nouveau  riche,  of  a  self-made  theorist.  In  reality, 
his  originality  consists  chiefly  in  the  conjunction 
in  his  theoretical  philosophy  of  two  tendencies 
previously  separate;  both  of  these  had  been  con- 
spicuously (though  not  exclusively)  represented 
before  his  time  in  British  epistemology  and  meta- 
physics. In  his  "Copernican  revolution,"  his 
"transcendental"  idealism,  his  apriorism,  he  is 
merely  the  elaborator  and  systematizer  of  the 
general  doctrine  of  the  English  Platonists ;  in  his 
sceptical  attitude  towards  that  which  "transcends 
possible  experience"  and  in  his  feeling  that  the 
first  task  of  philosophy  is  to  set  bounds  to  the 
aspirations  of  human  knowledge,  he  is  the  disciple 
of  Locke  and  Hume.  The  work  of  his  own  fol- 
lowers has  largely  consisted  in  striking  out  the 
second  of  these  two  elements  in  his  system,  and 
in  developing  out  of  the  first  conclusions  of  a  type 
long  since  familiar  to  the  earlier  and  English 
representatives  of  rationalistic   idealism. 


A   CRITIQUE  OF  KANT'S  ETHICS 


A  CRITIQUE  OF  KANT'S  ETHICS' 

Bt  Feixx  Adleb 

In  the  preface  to  the  second  edition  of  the  **  Kritik 
of  Pure  Reason"  Kant  says:  "It behooved  me  to 
destroy  knowledge  (that  is,  the  presumed  knowl- 
edge of  transcendental  truths)  in  order  to  make 
way  for  behef."  His  moral  behef  was  founded  on 
his  ethical  theory.  This  theory  it  is  the  purpose 
of  my  paper  to  subject  to  criticism. 

The  task  of  honest  criticism  is  difficult.  The 
popular  adage  tells  us  that  it  is  hard  to  see  our- 
selves as  others  see  us.  It  is  no  less  hard  to  see  an- 
other in  the  manner  in  which  he  sees  himself,  to 
enter  into  his  mental  world,  to  put  one's  self  men- 
tally in  his  place,  to  see  the  objects  of  his  thought 
in  the  same  illumination  in  which  they  present 
themselves  to  his  inner  eye.  Yet,  without  thus 
stripping  off  one's  own  personality,  as  it  were,  with- 
out some  such  preliminary  act  of  self-renunciation, 

'  The  author  of  this  contribution  found  to  his  especial  regret  that  his 
engagements  forbade  his  preparing  a  f)aj)er  expressly  for  the  present  volume. 
Desiring  however  to  share  in  the  expression  of  the  feeling  it  embodies  he 
welcomed  the  Ekiitors'  suggestion  that  he  should  reprint  for  the  first  time 
(without  revision),  and  house  permanently  here  a  paper  contributed  to 
Mind,  N.  B.,  Vol.  XI,  No.  42,  p.  162.  Acknowledgments  are  due  to 
The   Mind    Association   for   their   consent    to   its    republication.  —  Eds. 

20  805 


306  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

without  a  willingness  to  learn  from  another,  nay, 
almost,  for  the  time  being,  to  become  that  other, 
the  business  of  the  critic  is  hopeless  from  the  first. 
Nor  ought  these  remarks  to  appear  superfluous  to 
anyone  who  remembers  the  fate  encountered  by 
the  Kantian  philosophy  at  the  hands  of  many  of 
his  interpreters.  The  greatness  of  this  extraor- 
dinary thinker  has  indeed  been  acknowledged  by 
all.  But,  after  some  preliminary  tributes  to  his 
genius,  the  attempt  has  often  been  made  to  over- 
throw his  credit  by  triumphantly  refuting  opinions 
which  he  never  held,  and  to  expound  his  system, 
not  in  the  light  of  doctrines  which  he  himself  taught, 
and  for  which  he  was  willing  to  stand  sponsor,  but 
according  to  what,  in  the  opinion  of  his  expositors, 
he  ought  to  have  taught,  or  would  have  if  he  had  as 
clearly  known  his  own  mind  as  they  professed  to 
know  it,  or  if  he  had  foreseen  the  imphcations  of 
his  thought  which  they,  his  successors,  had  suc- 
ceeded in  explicating.  In  this  way  it  has  come 
about  that  some  of  the  most  authoritative  accounts 
of  the  Kantian  philosophy  in  the  Enghsh  language 
are  so  infiltrated  with  the  elements  of  those  later 
systems,  which  Kant  himself  did  not  know  and 
which  in  their  first  beginnings  he  repudiated,  that 
his  actual  teachings  in  the  minds  of  many  have 
become  obscured,  and  a  kind  of  bastard  Kantianism 
has  come  into  vogue,  reminding  one  of  the  spurious 
Aristotelianism  that  was  current  in  the  schools  of 
the  Middle  Ages. 


FELIX  ADLER  307 

I  mention  these  facts  at  the  outset  as  a  warning 
intended  not  so  much  for  my  readers  as  for  myself. 
I,  too,  am  about  to  undertake  the  hazardous  task 
of  criticism.  It  is  well  to  remind  one's  self  of  the 
pitfalls  that  beset  such  an  undertaking. 

To  criticise,  one  must  understand.  To  under- 
stand, one  must  sympathize,  nay,  one  ought,  in  the 
first  instance,  to  forget  criticism  and  be  willing  to 
take  the  humble  attitude  of  a  learner.  The  entire 
ethical  system  of  Kant  depends  on  the  idea  of  free- 
dom —  not  on  freedom  itself,  but  on  the  idea  of 
freedom.  What  meaning  does  he  attach  to  this 
idea  ?  How  does  it  originate  ?  How  does  he  seek 
to  legitimate  it  ?  How  does  he  endeavor  to  recon- 
cile it  with  the  idea  of  necessity  ?  These  questions 
we  shall  now  take  up. 

The  passages  which  it  concerns  us  to  study  and 
to  keep  before  us  in  their  ensemble^  as  each  in  some 
degree  supplements  the  others,  are :  the  chapter  on 
Freedom  in  the  "  Kritik  of  the  Pure  Reason,"  the 
corresponding  chapter  in  the  "  Kritik  of  the  Prac- 
tical Reason,"  a  chapter  on  this  subject  in  the 
*'  Prolegomena,"  and,  in  addition,  the  observations 
contained  in  Kant's  *'  Philosophical  Diary,"  edited 
by  Erdmann,  and  published  in  1884:  "Observa- 
tions on  Freedom,"  numbers  1511  to  1552  inclu- 
sive. I  shall  make  the  attempt  to  state  the  main 
points  of  Kant's  argument  in  a  series  of  propositions. 

First,  a  distinction  is  to  be  drawn  between  the 
fact  of  experience,   the  inference  from   this  fact. 


308  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

and  the  argument  designed  to  furnish  a  metaphys- 
ical basis  for  this  inference.  The  fact  of  experi- 
ence is  the  occurrence  in  us  of  judgments  implying 
absolute  obhgation.  I  ought  to  act  in  such  and 
such  a  way,  irrespective  of  my  inchnations,  and 
even  contrary  to  them,  without  regard  to  the  force 
of  obstructive  habits,  heredity,  education,  environ- 
ment, etc. ;  something  it  is  absolutely  right  for  me 
to  do.  A  merely  hypothetical  judgment  affirms 
that  certain  means  ought  to  be  adopted  in  case  I 
desire  the  end.  A  categorical  judgment  affirms  the 
existence  of  an  end  which  I  am  not  at  liberty  to 
choose  or  reject  at  my  good  pleasure,  but  am  under 
obligation  to  choose.  In  every  other  case  the  word 
"ought"  refers  to  the  means.  In  the  case  of  moral 
obligation  the  word  "ought"  refers  to  the  end 
itself  as  well  as  to  the  means.  This  fact  of  experi- 
ence constitutes  the  starting-point  of  the  Kantian 
ethics.  If  we  dispute  this  fact,  we  part  company 
from  him  ab  initio.  Let  us,  however,  hold  in  abey- 
ance any  objections  that  may  arise  in  our  minds 
and  pursue  the  argument  further. 

The  starting-point,  then,  is  the  fact,  real  or  as- 
sumed, of  unconditional  obhgation.  The  infer- 
ence from  the  fact  is  what  Kant  calls  practical 
freedom.  Because  "thou  oughtest,"  therefore 
"thou  canst."  It  is  of  the  utmost  moment  to  re- 
member that  the  freedom  of  the  will,  according 
to  Kant,  is  not  a  matter  of  experience.  Moral 
freedom  is  not  for  an  instant  to  be  confounded 


FELIX  ADLER  309 

with  psychological  freedom,  the  faculty  of  dehb- 
eration  or  suspended  judgment,  or  the  conscious- 
ness of  self-determination.  Freedom,  according 
to  Kant,  cannot  be  proved  to  occur  in  conscious- 
ness at  all.  It  is  not  itself  a  fact  of  experience, 
but  an  inference  from  such  a  fact.  The  fact  itself 
is  the  judgment  "thou  oughtest."  The  inference 
is  "thou  canst,"  "thou  art  free." 

In  the  next  place,  practical  freedom  requires  for 
its  speculative  basis  transcendental  freedom.  If 
we  are,  on  moral  grounds  and  for  purely  moral 
purposes,  to  regard  ourselves  as  free  agents  we 
must  be  able  to  justify  the  idea  of  freedom  in  its 
own  right ;  we  must  be  able  to  show,  at  least,  that 
no  self-contradiction  is  involved  in  assuming  it, 
and  especially  that  it  may  be  held  without  infringe 
ing  upon  the  law  of  universal  causality,  which  is 
the  foundation  of  science.  Moral  liberty  may  im- 
ply affirmations  which  transcend  the  domain  of 
science.  It  must  not,  however,  come  into  conflict 
with  science  in  its  own  field.  If  we  are  to  accept 
the  doctrine  of  freedom  at  all  it  must  be  possible 
to  define  freedom  and  necessity  in  such  a  way  that 
both  may  be  held  conjointly. 

It  will  be  of  assistance  to  us,  at  this  point,  to 
recall  the  decisive  contrast  in  method  which 
marks  off  from  one  another  Kant  and  his  idealistic 
successors.  The  latter  started  from  the  metaphys- 
ical side  in  order  to  construe  the  world  of  experi- 
ence.    Kant  always  sets  out  from  the  empirical 


310  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

side  and  his  metaphysics  consists  of  a  series  of 
fundamental  principles  intended  to  establish  the 
laws  of  experience  on  a  secure  foundation.  The 
whole  of  the  "Kritik"  is  orientated  toward  the 
exact  sciences.  The  phrase  "the  possibihty  of  ex- 
perience," of  constant  recurrence  throughout  the 
"Kritik,"  means  nothing  but  the  possibihty  of  exact 
scientific  knowledge.  What  seem  to  the  superficial 
reader  mere  metaphysical  entities,  leading  an  in- 
dependent existence  in  the  thin  upper  air  of  specu- 
lation—  I  mean  the  chorus  of  a  prioris^  with  the 
unity  of  self- consciousness  as  their  Apollo  at  their 
head,  turn  out  on  closer  acquaintance  to  be  the 
very  Lares  and  Penates  of  the  scientific  household, 
the  famihar  genii  to  which  every  serious  investi- 
gator pays  homage  on  entering  his  study  or  his 
laboratory.  It  would  doubtless  tend  to  facilitate 
the  understanding  of  Kant's  thought  and  to  strip 
it  of  the  air  of  foreignness  which  is  produced  by 
a  somewhat  pedantic  terminology,  if  the  student 
would  always  bear  in  mind  the  concrete  scientific 
problems,  with  reference  to  which  the  discussions  in 
the  "Kritik"  are  carried  on,  but  which  the  author, 
as  a  rule,  does  not  distinctly  mention,  in  order  that 
the  purely  abstract  character  of  his  argument  may 
be  preserved.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  Transcenden- 
tal iEsthetic  deals  with  the  T  and  S  of  mechanical 
physics,  not  with  the  psychological  notions  of  time 
and  space,  nor  with  their  genesis.  The  chapter 
on  the  Axioms  of  Intuition  is  concerned  with  the 


FELIX  ABLER  311 

application  of  pure  mathematics  in  its  complete 
precision  to  the  objects  of  experience.  The  Antici- 
pation of  Perception  is  concerned  with  the  funda- 
mental principle  that  underlies  the  conception 
and  the  measurement  of  force.  In  the  discussion 
of  Causahty  and  of  Reciprocity  or  Community  it 
is  Newton's  laws  of  motion  which  the  argument 
keeps  in  view.^  In  the  chapter  on  the  Postulates  of 
Empirical  Thinking  we  are  invited  to  clarify  our 
thought  with  respect  to  the  scope  and  hmitations 
of  scientific  hypotheses.  Even  when  we  pass  be- 
yond the  borders  of  the  Analytic  and  discuss  the 
ideas  of  the  reason,  we  have  not  escaped  from  the 
territory  of  the  exact  sciences.  The  idea  of  God, 
for  instance,  in  the  "Kritik"  is  justified  on  the 
ground  of  its  scientific  usefulness.  It  is  intended, 
though  capable  of  being  charged  later  on  with  a 
richer  meaning,  to  promote  the  process  of  induc- 
tion so  that  it  may  confidently  be  pushed  to  its 
farthest  possible  hmits.  The  ideas  of  the  homoge- 
neity, the  specification  and  the  aflSnity  of  nature  are 
gathered  together,  as  it  were,  in  a  kind  of  mental 
symbol,  with  the  ens  realissimum,  or  God,  as  their 
substratum.  We  are  asked  to  look  upon  nature  as  if 
it  were  the  work  of  a  rational  being,  not  because 
we  have  the  right  to  affirm  the  existence  of  such  a 
being,  but  that  we  may  the  better  succeed  in  discov- 
ering such  rational  connections  in  nature  as  actu- 
ally subsist.    We  are  asked  to  regard  it  as  a  coherent 

•  See  Hermann  Cohen's  "  Kants  Theorie  der  Erfahrung." 


312  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

whole  in  order  that  we  may  make  our  interpretation 
of  it  as  coherent  as  possible. 

The  T  and  S  of  mechanical  physics,  Newton's 
laws  of  motion,  the  scope  of  scientific  hypotheses, 
the  assumptions  that  underlie  the  process  of  induc- 
tion, these  and  such  as  these,  and  the  problems 
which  they  involve  are  the  subjects  with  which  the 
"  Kritik  "  is  concerned.  If  Kant  had  entitled  his 
book  "A  Philosophical  Inquiry  into  the  Funda- 
mental Principles  of  the  Exact  Sciences,"  such  a 
title  would  have  covered  the  positive  side  of  the 
"  Kritik,"  and  possibly  might  have  served  to  pre- 
vent much  subsequent  misinterpretation. 

Kant  —  let  us  hold  fast  to  this  one  thought  — 
intends  by  his  entire  system  to  account  for  the 
element  of  certainty  in  experience.  He  distinguishes 
between  knowledge,  loosely  so  called,  and  knowl- 
edge in  the  strict  sense,  between  perceptive  judg- 
ments and  judgments  of  experience  or  scientific 
judgments.  He  asks.  Whence  the  difference  ?  Or, 
to  put  it  in  another  way,  it  is  the  distinction  between 
the  expectation  of  future  happenings,  founded  on 
previous  association,  and  the  prediction  of  future 
happenings,  founded  on  scientific  certainty,  that 
constitutes  the  pivot  on  which  the  **  KJritik  of  Pure 
Reason"  hinges.  Does  scientific  prediction  merely 
differ  in  degree  from  that  expectation  which  is 
encouraged  by  habitual  sequence  ?  Is  the  differ- 
ence one  merely  of  degree.''  Kant  asserts  that  it 
is  a  difference  in  kind.    There  are  a  prioris  in  a 


FELIX  ADLER  313 

certain  part  of  our  knowledge,  and  this  part  he 
calls  experience.  And  what  are  these  a  prioris  ? 
They  are  the  factors  of  certainty.  The  substitu- 
tion of  the  term  "factors  of  certainty"  for  the 
term  a  priori  might  be  a  gain.  The  term  a  priori 
suggests  independent  existence  which  Kant,  far 
from  asserting,  constantly  and  strenuously  denies. 
It  suggests  a  pretended  insight  into  the  aboriginal 
constitution  of  the  mind,  into  the  germinal  prin- 
ciples out  of  which  intelligence  has  developed. 
And  this  claim  of  pretended  insight,  I  take  it,  was 
equally  foreign  to  Kant's  conception.  At  any  rate, 
the  validity  of  his  theory  of  knowledge  does  not 
depend  on  the  admittance  of  any  such  claim.  The 
term  a  priori  suggests  chronological  antecedence 
and,  in  this  respect,  it  is  particularly  misleading. 
The  Kantian  a  priori  is  discovered  not  in  its  origin, 
but  in  its  operation.  The  a  priori  in  the  Kantian 
sense  may  be  synchronous  with  its  product,  may 
be  born  at  the  very  moment  when  it  yields  its  first 
effect.  If  a  new  science  were  to  arise,  containing 
some  new  element  of  certainty  heretofore  unmani- 
fested,  we  should  be  compelled  to  formulate  a  new 
variety  of  the  so-called  a  priori,  and  we  should  be 
justified  by  the  spirit,  if  not  by  the  letter,  of  Kant's 
teachings  in  so  doing.  The  doctrine  of  the  a  priori, 
often  confused  as  it  is  with  the  doctrine  of  innate 
ideas  and  of  intuition,  is  really  as  unlike  these  doc- 
trines as  it  is  possible  to  be.  The  thinker  of  the 
Kantian  type  does  not  attempt  to  discover  a  men- 


314  THE  ETHICS  OF   KANT 

tal  content  which  is  common  to  the  Fiji  Islander 
and  to  Lord  Kelvin,  does  not  attempt  to  acquaint 
us  with  an  a  priori  which  consoled  the  cave  man 
in  his  moments  of  meditation.  Nor  does  he  speak 
of  truths  which  are  apprehended  in  a  flash  of  intui- 
tion, apart  from  experience.  The  thinker  who 
follows  along  the  Kantian  lines  lies  in  wait,  watch- 
ing how  the  human  mind  behaves  when  it  exer- 
cises its  powers.  He  observes  how  the  mind  reveals 
itself  in  the  exercise  of  its  powers,  and  these  mo- 
ments of  self-revelation  he  fixes  on  his  philosophic 
camera.  He  watches  to  see  what  harvest  of  assured 
knowledge  the  soil  of  the  human  mind  produces 
under  the  rarest  and  most  favorable  conditions, 
and  from  this  crop  he  makes  his  inference  as  to 
the  seed.  But  as  to  the  origin  of  the  seed  itself, 
as  to  how  it  came  to  be  planted  in  the  human 
mind,  —  into  such  questions  as  these  he  forbears 
to  inquire,  and  the  whole  question  of  genetic  de- 
velopment he  leaves  to  the  psychologist,  to  deal 
with  as  he  may  see  fit. 

I  have  said  that  Kant  traverses  the  field  of  ex- 
perience and  that  wherever  he  finds  an  element 
of  certainty  he  raises  the  question  as  to  the  factor 
which  produces  it.  And  this  brings  us  back,  after 
a  somewhat  lengthy  but,  I  trust,  not  irrelevant 
digression,  to  the  subject  in  hand.  In  the  realm 
of  ethics,  too,  he  lights  upon  an  element  of  certainty, 
namely,  that  which  is  implied  in  the  Categorical 
Imperative,  in  the  idea  that  there  are  lines  of  con- 


FELIX  ADLER  315 

duct  which  ought  to  be  followed  at  all  times  and 
by  all  persons.  There  is,  indeed,  a  capital  differ- 
ence between  the  certainties  of  science  and  those 
of  ethics.  The  former  are  verified  in  experience 
while  the  latter  are  not  capable  of  such  verification. 
It  cannot  be  proved,  Kant  tells  us,  that  a  single 
human  being  has  ever  obeyed  the  Categorical  Im- 
perative, that  a  single  human  being  has  ever  pur- 
sued the  line  of  conduct  which  yet  he  must  admit 
to  be  universally  binding.  There  is  a  gap  between 
assent  and  performance  of  which  it  cannot  be 
shown  that  it  has  been  filled,  even  in  a  single  in- 
stance. In  ethics,  therefore,  we  do  not  deal  with 
any  demonstrable  lawfulness  or  certainty  of  con- 
duct, but  with  the  idea  of  such  certainty,  of  such 
lawfulness,  and  it  is  the  task  of  ethical  philosophy, 
according  to  Kant,  to  account  for  this  idea. 

To  repeat  what  was  said  above  —  "  thou  ought- 
est,  therefore  thou  canst,"  is  the  starting-point. 
To  say  "thou  canst"  is  to  assert  practical  free- 
dom; but  practical  freedom  presupposes  tran- 
scendental freedom.  To  an  examination  of  the 
latter  we  shall  now  pass  on.  Transcendental  fre- 
dom  is,  putting  the  gist  of  Kant's  thought  into  a 
single  sentence,  the  timeless  origination  of  effects 
that  appear  in  time.  In  Observation  1543  (Kant's 
"  Reflexionen  ")  we  read :  "  Transcendental  freedom 
(of  any  substance  whatsoever)  is  absolute  spon- 
taneity in  action.  Practical  freedom  is  the  faculty 
of  acting  on  the  sole  impetus  of  reason."     Obser- 


316  THE   ETHICS   OF  KANT 

vation  1541:  "Freedom  is  the  independence  of 
causality  from  the  conditions  of  space  and  time," 
—  the  causahty  of  a  thing  regarded  as  a  thing  per  se. 
Observation  1533:  "Freedom  is  the  faculty  of  a 
cause  to  determine  itself  to  action,  untrammelled 
by  sense  conditions."  Observation  1545:  "We 
cannot  demonstrate  freedom  a  posteriori.  .  .  . 
We  cannot  cognize  the  possibility  of  freedom  a 
priori,  for  the  possibility  of  an  original  ground  of 
action,  which  is  not  determined  by  some  other,  is 
wholly  inconceivable.  Hence,  we  cannot  theo- 
retically prove  freedom  at  all,  but  only  demonstrate 
it  as  a  necessary  practical  hypothesis."  The  gist 
of  these  quotations  may  be  put  as  follows :  Tran- 
scendental freedom  is  the  pure  self-activity  of 
reason,  or  the  application  to  one  substance  of  a 
general  notion  which,  in  the  case  of  transcendental 
freedom,  embraces  all  substances.  Freedom  is 
inexphcable  and  inconceivable.  We  cannot  prove 
its  actuahty  nor  even  its  possibihty.  For,  what  is 
meant  by  an  act  of  spontaneous  vohtion  or  by  a 
substance  which,  without  any  determining  influ- 
ence from  beyond  its  sphere,  produces  the  motives 
upon  which  it  acts,  we  are  incapable  of  understand- 
ing. The  idea  of  freedom  takes  us  outside  the 
phenomenal  world  into  the  region  of  things  per  se, 
or  of  noumena.  Freedom,  be  it  distinctly  noted, 
is  vested  in  the  noumena.  What  is  called  psycho- 
logical freedom  is  a  transparent  piece  of  self-decep- 
tion.  Self-determination,  which  has  sometimes  been 


FELIX  ADLER  317 

presented  as  a   substitute  for  freedom,  —  namely, 
the  fact  that,  after  our  character  has  been  formed 
by  heredity,  education,  environment,  in  short,  by  the 
confluence  of  innumerable  extraneous  influences, 
we  then  act  along  the  hnes  of  this,  our  character  — 
such  self-determination  Kant  dismisses  with  a  single 
word  of  infinite  contempt.     "The  freedom  of  a 
mechanical   turnspit"   he   calls   it.     No;    genuine 
freedom  he  demands,  self-activity  of    the   reason 
—  a  very  different  thing  from  self-determination  — 
the  rational   substance    in  us   acting    on   its   own 
motion,  causing  to  emerge  of  its  own  accord  the 
commanding  motives  that  ought  to  sway  our  will. 
But  this  freedom,  he  tells  us,  occurs  behind  the 
scenes.     We  have  no  consciousness  of  it,  at  least, 
not  any  that  we  can  build  on.     There  is  an  actor 
in  us  who  never  takes   off  his  mask,  who  never 
appears  on  the  stage,  and  of  whom,  nevertheless, 
we  are  to  assume  that  he  exists  because  of  certain 
effects  which  he  produces,  from  behind,  or  from 
within;    in  short,  from  the  region  of  the  unseen. 
This  actor  is  our  noumenon.     Freedom  is  vested 
in  the  noumenon ;  our  freedom  is  in  our  noumenon. 
But,  in  this  connection,  it  becomes  indispensable 
to  pause  and  to  consider  to  what  we  should  be  com- 
mitting ourselves  if  we  were  to  go  along  with  Kant 
in  assuming  noumena  in  general  and  the  noumenon 
of  man  in  particular,  more  especially  as  the  de- 
gree of  reahty  which  belongs  to  freedom  depends 
on  the  reahty  ascribed  to  the  noumenon  of  which 


318  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

freedom  is  a  function.  Now  does  Kant  say  that 
things  fer  se  exist?  Not  at  all.  He  says  they 
must  be  assumed  to  exist.  The  distinction  is 
sharp.  At  first  blush,  it  looks  as  if,  in  contrast 
to  phenomena,  which  convey  merely  the  appear- 
ance of  reality,  the  things  per  se  were  designed  to 
satisfy  our  craving  for  the  ultimately  real.  The 
world  of  phenomena  is  the  world  of  seeming ;  that 
of  noumena  the  world  of  truth.  But,  in  a  certain 
sense,  the  direct  opposite  is  unquestionably  Kant's 
meaning.  The  world  of  phenomena  is  for  us  — 
and,  of  course,  only  for  us  —  the  world  of  objec- 
tive reality.  By  no  other  means,  according  to 
Kant,  can  we  attain  to  the  knowledge  of  reality 
except  by  subjecting  the  data  of  sensation  to  the 
synthetic  processes  of  the  understanding.  Sense 
data,  thus  synthetized,  he  calls  objects.  They 
exist.  The  solar  system  exists.  The  fall  of  a  stone 
is  an  actual  occurrence.  The  things  per  se  do  not 
exist.  They  are  only  assumed  to  exist.  Accord- 
ing to  Kant,  the  separate  rings  in  the  chain  of  ex- 
perience and  the  interconnection  of  link  with  link, 
are  real.  But  the  whole  chain  is  not  a  reality.  The 
notion  that  the  chain  can  be  carried  back  end- 
lessly, or  that  it  is  suspended  somewhere,  from 
an  aboriginal  pier  or  support,  does  not  correspond 
to  reality.  Such  a  thing  as  a  universe  does  not 
exist,  except  only  in  idea. 

If  this  be  the  case,  if  noumena  do  not  exist,  but 
are  only  assumed  to  exist,  what  profit  is  there  in 


FELIX  ADLER  319 

assuming  them  ?  They  have  such  value  as  belongs 
to  concepts  of  hmit.  Negatively,  they  serve  to  warn 
us  that  our  interpretation  of  things  is  not  the  only 
possible  one,  not  the  final  one.  We,  indeed,  can 
know  no  other;  but  we  can  know  that  there  may 
be.  must  be,  others.  With  the  sort  of  material  to 
which  we  are  restricted,  namely,  the  data  of  sen- 
sation, with  the  sort  of  mental  tools  with  which 
we  must  work,  namely,  the  synthetic  processes  of 
the  understanding,  Kant  tells  us  we  may  never 
hope  to  complete  the  chain  of  knowledge.  Not 
only  have  we  not  succeeded  thus  far,  but,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  the  prospect  of  complete  success 
is  excluded.  But  in  addition,  the  noumena  have 
certain  positive  values.  They  are  "dukes  of  the 
marches,"  stationed  on  the  frontier  of  the  king- 
dom of  science  to  defend  it  against  the  incursions 
of  supernaturaUsm  and  to  extend  it  without  as- 
signable limit,  under  the  stimulus  of  the  idea  of 
totality  which,  though  incapable  of  realization, 
is  indispensable  as  a  provocative  of  effort.  And, 
in  addition,  there  are  two  noumena,  the  noume- 
non  of  God,  and  the  noumenon  of  man  which,  in 
the  field  of  morahty  and  religion,  acquire  the  high- 
est kind  of  positive,  practical  value,  this  value 
consisting  in  their  being  the  assumed  centres  of 
self- activity,  the  assumed  fountain-heads  of  that 
freedom  which,  in  virtue  of  the  Categorical  Im- 
perative, according  to  Kant,  we  are  compelled  to 
postulate.    Does  this  ethical  value  make  them  any 


820  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

the  more  real?  If  we  keep  within  the  bounds  of 
Kant's  thought,  I  think  we  must  answer  in  the 
negative.  We  must  assume  that  the  noumenon  of 
man,  for  instance,  the  centre  of  his  self- activity, 
exists.  We  are  bound  to  act  as  if  it  existed,  but  we 
do  not  know  that  it  exists,  and  we  cannot  say 
it  does  exist,  as  we  say  that  hght  exists ;  we  cannot 
say  that  self-activity  operates,  as  we  say  that  the 
forces  of  nature  operate. 

So  far  off,  so  impalpable,  so,  in  a  certain  sense, 
unreal  is  this  rational  noumenon,  so  little  does  it 
enter  into  competition  with  the  things  whereof  we 
know.  A  high,  subtle,  abstract,  inconceivable, 
though  not  therefore  unthinkable,  somewhat !  We 
are  bound  to  act  as  if  it  existed.  This  is  the  whole 
outcome.  Whatever  certainty  belongs  to  it  is  in 
the  nature  of  moral  certainty.  Whatever  life-blood 
of  reality  it  possesses  it  borrows  from  its  uses.  It 
is  not  the  ultimate  reality.  It  is  an  X  that  stands 
for  the  ultimately  real.  Yet,  even  to  go  as  far  as 
this,  even  to  admit  the  noumenon  into  our  scheme 
of  thought  at  all,  as  an  indispensable  auxiliary  of 
moral  effort,  we  are  obliged  to  show,  unless  our 
mental  household  is  to  be  hopelessly  divided  against 
itself,  that  self-activity  and  mechanical  causality 
can  subsist  together,  that  they  do  not  clash,  that 
the  order  of  nature  and  the  order  of  freedom  may 
obtain  in  the  self- same  act. 

Let  us  review,  for  a  moment,  the  steps  we  have 
taken.    Unconditional  obligation,  the  one  sure  fact 


FELIX  ADLER  321 

and  the  starting-point.  Practical  freedom  the  in- 
ference. Transcendental  freedom,  the  presupposi- 
tion of  the  latter.  Freedom,  wholly  ruled  out  as  a 
matter  of  experience,  lodged  in  the  noumenon. 
This  noumenon,  this,  our  transcendental  substance, 
the  timeless  originator  of  effects  in  time,  incapable 
of  being  proved  to  exist,  but  only  assumed  to  do  so. 
Yet  the  freedom  which  is  thus  assumed,  inconceiv- 
able and  inexplicable  as  it  may  be,  must,  at  least, 
be  shown  to  be  not  incompatible  with  natural  caus- 
ality. To  the  task  of  showing  this  Kant  addresses 
himself  in  the  famous  chapter  of  the  "Kritik," 
which,  as  has  been  said,  should  be  taken  in  con- 
junction with  his  statements  in  the  "Prolegomena," 
in  the  "K.  P.  R."  and  in  the  "Reflexions."  He  is 
aware  of  the  diflficulties  of  his  task  and  wrestles 
painfully  both  with  his  thought  and  with  the  expres- 
sion of  it.  I  myself  do  not  beheve  that  he  has 
succeeded  in  solving  his  problem ;  but  I  have  been 
chiefly  concerned,  thus  far,  in  my  interpretation, 
to  make  clear  the  auxihary  nature  of  his  metaphys- 
ical concepts,  and  I  trust  I  have  shown  that  they 
are  quite  devoid  of  that  transcendent  or  mystical 
meaning  with  which  some  believe  them  to  be  fraught. 
In  commenting  on  the  subject  which  w^e  now  take  up, 
my  principal  concern,  before  I  attempt  to  criticise  at 
all,  will  still  be  the  same,  to  arrive  at  Kant's  exact 
meaning  as  far  as  possible,  and  to  demonstrate  that 
it  is  far  less  charged  with  positive  metaphysical  aflSr- 
mation  than  a  cursory  reading  might  suggest. 

21 


THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

Others  have  said:  determinism  or  freedom. 
Kant  says :  determinism  and  freedom.  The  line 
of  his  argument  is  a  straight  and  narrow  way,  as 
narrow  as  a  razor's  edge.  It  is  easy  to  miss  his 
drift,  as  the  example  of  famous  expounders  suflS- 
ciently  attests.  And  yet,  we  have  here  reached  the 
critical  point  of  Kant's  ethics,  and  should  we  fail 
to  obtain  hght  here,  we  shall  have  to  grope  in  dark- 
ness through  all  the  remainder  of  our  journey. 
The  key- thoughts  which  express  the  terms  on  which 
the  reconciliation  between  freedom  and  necessity 
is  attempted  to  be  effected  are  the  following : 

(a)  If  the  objects  of  nature  were  things  per  se 
there  could  only  be  a  single  law  apphcable  to  them. 
Since  they  are  appearances  there  is  room  for  a 
double  law,  the  law  of  natural  causahty  applying 
to  the  appearances,  and  the  law  of  causahty  through 
freedom  applying  to  the  things  to  which  these 
appearances  correspond. 

(6)  Freedom  is  the  timeless  origination  of  effects 
in  time.  The  cause  is  noumenal;  the  effect  phe- 
nomenal. This  relation  is  possible  because  caus- 
ahty is  a  dynamic  relation,  and  the  cause  may 
therefore  dijfer  in  hind  from  the  effect. 

(c)  The  law  of  freedom  is  compatible  with  the 
law  of  mechanical  causahty  because  freedom  is  a 
"  cosmological  idea,"  that  is  to  say,  because  the 
notion  underlying  it  is  the  same  as  that  which 
underhes  mechanical  causality,  only  in  the  former 
case  expanded,  magnified,  raised  to  the  power  of 


FELIX  ADLER  323 

the  infinite.  The  common  notion  is  that  of  con- 
stancy and  necessity.  In  the  case  of  phenomena, 
that  which  happens  constantly  and  necessarily  — 
namely,  the  invariable  occurrence  of  certain  con- 
sequents after  certain  antecedents  —  is  condi- 
tioned upon  similar  dependable  relations  existing 
between  a  series  of  preceding  antecedents  and 
consequents.  The  mind,  however,  unable  to  pur- 
sue this  chase  to  the  finish,  fashions  for  itself  the 
idea  of  an  unconditional  necessity  and  constancy, 
that  is,  of  something  which  happens  always  and 
necessarily,  just  as  it  does  happen,  without  respect 
to  what  precedes  or  follows.  And  this  is  the  notion 
of  freedom  as  Kant  entertains  it.  The  point  of  his 
argument  on  behalf  of  reconciliation  is  that  the 
idea  of  constancy  and  universahty  in  general  does 
not  contradict  that  of  constancy  and  universahty 
in  a  particular  instance.  Farther  than  this  he  does 
not  attempt  to  go.  He  warns  us  repeatedly  that  he 
does  not  undertake  to  show  how  freedom  and  nat- 
ural causation  may  be  harmonized,  tliat  he  does  not 
attempt  to  show  that  freedom  is  actual  nor  yet  to 
show  how  it  is  possible,  but  only  that  it  is  possible, 
namely,  in  the  sense  that  the  notion  of  freedom,  as 
of  unconditioned  necessity  and  constancy,  does 
not  contradict  the  notion  of  conditioned  necessity 
and  constancy,  but  rather  is  an  extension  of  the 
latter,  the  latter  raised  in  idea  to  the  power  of  the 
infinite.  To  put  the  thought  in  different  language, 
the  idea  of  freedom,  while  leaving  the  empirical 


324  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

nexus  untouched,  superadds  the  missing  logical 
link  between  antecedent  and  consequent.  The 
empirical  nexus  is  a  foot-bridge  that  spans  a  river. 
Causahty,  through  freedom,  is  the  steel  cable  that 
connects  the  banks  and  supports  the  frail  struc- 
ture that  hangs  suspended  from  it.  The  idea  of 
freedom  is  that  of  the  complete  conditioning  of 
what,  in  experience,  is  always  incompletely  condi- 
tioned, and  this  idea  is  reached,  not  by  a  perfect 
regressus  from  which  we  are  precluded,  but  by 
our  going  outside  of  the  time  series,  being  war- 
ranted in  so  doing  by  the  dissimilarity  in  kind  that 
may  subsist  between  a  cause  and  its  effect.  (I 
ought  to  here  say,  by  way  of  caution,  that  Kant 
does  not  attempt  to  efface  the  distinction  between 
the  order  of  nature  and  the  order  of  freedom,  when 
he  urges  upon  our  attention  what  is  common  to 
both,  namely,  the  notion  of  constancy  and  neces- 
sity in  happenings.  Unconditioned  self-activity 
and  activity  determined  by  antecedent  conditions 
remain  as  widely  apart  as  ever.  The  two  have 
not  really  been  reconciled.  Still,  if  we  admit  the 
argument,  they  are  shown  to  be  not  irreconcilable. 
The  same  act  which  we  know  to  be  determined, 
when  we  regard  it  as  lying  in  the  empirical  series, 
we  may  regard  as  free,  when  we  consider  it  as  the 
effect  of  a  deeper,  under- working  cause.  And  at 
this  point,  it  may  be  well  to  observe  the  closeness 
of  connection  between  the  "Kritik  of  Practical 
Reason"  and  the  "Kritik  of  Pure  Reason."    The 


FELIX  ADLER  325 

formula  of  the  Categorical  Imperative  is  but  the 
application  to  conduct  of  the  idea  of  necessity 
and  universahty,  that  is,  of  freedom  regarded  as 
a  cosmological  idea. 

Let  us  now  proceed  to  consider  how  these  key- 
thoughts  are  applied  to  the  problem  of  the  free- 
dom of  the  human  will.  First,  a  distinction  is  drawn 
between  the  empirical  character  and  the  noumenal 
character.  The  former  is  wholly  subject  to  the 
law  of  natural  necessity ;  the  latter  is  free.  Every 
act  of  ours,  Kant  tells  us,  is  to  be  referred  back  for 
explanation  to  antecedent  conditions.  All  that 
part  of  any  human  act  which  is  exphcable  is  thus 
to  be  explained.  If  we  could  completely  know  the 
empirical  character  of  a  man  at  any  given  moment, 
we  should  be  able  to  predict  all  his  future  actions 
with  as  much  certainty  as  we  predict  an  echpse. 
Language  could  not  be  more  explicit  than  this. 
The  law  of  natural  causahty  tolerates  no  exception, 
and  our  empirical  self,  the  only  self  we  know,  lies 
wholly  within  the  province  of  that  law.  Wherein, 
then,  does  freedom  consist  ?  In  the  fact  that  our 
empirical  self  is  but  the  phenomenon  of  the  nou- 
menal self,  in  the  fact  that  the  whole  series  of  our 
acts  is  but  the  manifestation  in  time  of  a  timeless 
choice.  The  noumenon  does  not  enter  as  an  inter- 
loper between  any  antecedent  and  its  consequent. 
It  is  the  profounder  reality  of  which  the  whole 
string  of  antecedents  and  consequents  is  the 
external  apparition. 


326  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

Further  amplification  and  elucidation,  however, 
are  needed.  What,  we  may  ask,  does  Kant  mean 
when  he  says  that  a  man's  empirical  character  is 
the  phenomenon  of  his  particular  noumenon? 
Empirically,  the  influences  that  contribute  to  form 
us  stretch  back  far  beyond  the  limits  of  our  indi- 
viduality. Sixteen  grandparents,  if  we  go  back 
only  a  few  generations,  and  hosts  of  ancestors  back 
of  these,  have  helped  to  mould  us.  Our  origins  are 
so  ramified  as  speedily  to  be  lost  to  view  in  the 
general  mass  of  humanity;  and  humanity  itself, 
in  its  beginnings,  extends  backward  into  the  ani- 
mal world.  What,  then,  does  Kant  mean  when  he 
says  that  my  empirical  character  is  the  appearance 
of  my  noumenon  ?  The  word  "  character,"  it  seems 
to  me,  is  to  be  taken  strictly.  Only  the  character 
is  the  phenomenon  of  the  noumenon.  And  what 
is  the  character.?  Briefly,  the  degree  of  intensity 
with  which  the  reason  in  me  resists  all  those  influ- 
ences upon  me  that  are  uncongenial  with  itself, 
the  degree  of  effort  which  the  reason  puts  forth  in 
affirming  itself.  When  Kant,  therefore,  declares 
that,  if  we  knew  a  man's  empirical  character  at  any 
moment,  we  could  predict  all  his  future  acts,  he 
includes  in  the  term  "character"  this  aboriginal 
set  of  the  will.  But,  if  this  be  so,  why  does  he 
assert  that,  nevertheless,  every  act  of  ours  can  be 
explained  in  terms  of  its  antecedents,  seeing  that 
the  set  of  our  will,  the  degree  of  intensity  with 
which   the  reason  resists   counter  influences   and 


FELIX  ADLER  327 

aflSrms  itself  is  the  operation  in  us  of  freedom  and 
cannot  be  explained  in  terms  of  antecedent  condi- 
tions. The  answer  to  this  question  is  that  the  set 
of  our  will,  the  degree  to  which  we  are  estranged 
from  or  conform  to  reason,  is  a  wholly  unknown 
quantity,  is  hidden  even  from  ourselves.  Yes,  in- 
deed, we  should  be  able  to  predict  a  man's  future 
acts  if  we  knew  his  empirical  character.  But  we 
never  can  know  his  empirical  character,  at  least, 
not  that  element  in  it  which  stamps  it  as  a  charac- 
ter, which  is  the  imprint  on  it  of  the  rational 
cause.  What  we  know  about  other  people  and 
even  about  ourselves  is  only  the  objective,  outward 
side  of  moraUty,  the  act,  but  never,  with  any  de- 
gree of  certainty,  the  motive.  Self-interest,  concern 
for  our  reputation,  the  desire  for  internal  peace 
may  account  even  for  those  acts  which  seem  the 
most  virtuous;  such  as  charity  to  the  poor,  self- 
sacrifice,  truthfulness,  etc.  Briefly,  the  morality 
of  an  act  does  not  lie  within  the  range  of  experience. 
We  may  give  ourselves  and  others  the  benefit  of 
the  doubt  and  assume  that  they  or  we  have  acted 
from  a  purely  rational  motive;  but  we  can  never 
be  sure  of  the  fact  that  they  have  or  that  we  have. 
Still  less  can  we  be  sure  of  the  degree  of  merit  to 
which  we  are  entitled  to  lay  claim.  Our  worth 
is  proportional  to  the  degree  of  effort  which  the 
rational  nature  in  us  puts  forth  in  the  attempt  to 
affirm  itself.  But  it  is  obvious  that  if  the  counter 
influences,  as  in  the  case  of  the  offspring  of  a  dipso- 


328  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

maniac,  are  great,  even  a  sturdy  effort  of  the  rational 
nature  may  produce  but  meagre  objective  results ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  influences  from 
without  are  propitious,  as  in  the  case  of  the  gently 
born,  even  a  feeble  effort  may  produce  outwardly 
fair  results.  The  degree  of  merit,  however,  is  pro- 
portioned, not  to  the  result,  but  to  the  effort,  and 
this,  even  in  our  own  case,  we  cannot  estimate. 

Of  the  Imperative  alone,  "thou  oughtest,"  are 
we  sure,  and  of  the  idea  of  freedom  involved  in  it. 
Actual  freedom  is  an  inference,  a  postulate.  But 
if  the  freely  operating  cause  be  thus  inaccessible 
and  if,  at  the  same  time,  unlike  the  noumena  of 
phenomena  in  general,  it  is  represented  as  a  cause 
which  has  intercourse  with  the  phenomenal  world, 
and  which  injects  its  influence  into  the  latter,  how 
are  we  to  represent  to  ourselves  this  connection  be- 
tween two  orders  of  existence  so  entirely  disparate  ? 
I  think  we  shall  best  comprehend  Kant's  language 
if  we  assume  that  what  he  says  on  this  subject  is 
to  be  understood  symbolically.  A  symbol,  in  the 
sense  in  which  Kant  employs  the  term,  is  a  nou- 
menon  represented  for  the  nonce  as  if  it  were 
clothed  with  phenomenal  attributes.  We  know 
that  the  garments  do  not  fit.  We  do  not  assert  that 
any  such  being  as  we  have  dressed  up  actually 
exists.  But  we  require  the  help  of  such  a  figment 
because  it  stands  for  or  symbolizes  an  ultimate 
truth,  which  we  need  to  keep  before  the  mind,  and 
of  which  we  cannot  in  any  other  way  lay  hold. 


FELIX  ADLER  329 

Thus,  for  instance,  the  conception  of  God,  as  Kant 
employs  it,  is  symbohc.  He  does  not  say  that  God 
exists.  On  the  contrary,  he  has  taken  the  utmost 
pains  to  destroy  the  proofs  of  his  existence.  Nor 
is  his  reintroduction  of  the  idea  of  God  a  glaring 
self-contradiction,  as  it  is  often  represented  to  be. 
He  tells  us  that  we  are  to  think  and  to  act  as  if 
such  a  being  existed,  for  certain  practical  purposes. 
He  has  draped  the  noumenon  in  phenomenal 
attributes.  And  in  the  same  way,  I  beheve,  in  the 
chief  passages  that  relate  to  the  subject  which  w^e 
are  now^  considering,  he  has  invested  the  noumenon 
of  freedom  with  phenomenal  attributes,  with  gar- 
ments that  do  not  fit,  with  attributes  that  really 
contradict  its  nature.  He  asks  us  to  pass  over  the 
contradiction,  to  look  upon  the  thing  as  if  it  were 
what  he  describes  it  to  be,  to  treat  it  as  the  symbol 
of  what  we  cannot,  in  its  own  essence,  grasp,  in 
order  that  we  may  be  able  to  keep  before  our 
minds  the  fact  that  there  is  such  a  noumenon. 
Thus,  for  instance,  he  represents  a  rational,  time- 
less cause  as  acting.  But  how  can  we  speak  of 
action  at  all  which  does  not  occur  in  time  ?  What 
sense  can  we  connect  with  the  words  "timeless 
action".''  Never  mind,  says  Kant,  we  are  deahng 
with  a  symbol.  A  noumenon  is  treated  ad  hoc 
as  if  it  were  a  phenomenon.  Again,  a  rational 
cause,  one  which  is  determined  solely  from  within, 
nevertheless  elects  in  a  timeless  choice  to  assert 
its  rational  nature  imperfectly.    The  lapses  of  our 


330  THE  ETHICS   OF  KANT 

empirical  character  are  represented  as  due  to  a  nou- 
menal  flaw.  But  how  can  there  be  such  a  flaw? 
Since  reason,  ex  hypothesis  is  not  determined  by  any- 
thing outside  itself  but  solely  by  itself,  how  can  it 
give  effect  to  its  nature  otherwise  than  in  a  perfectly 
adequate  manner?  Once  more,  "Never  mind." 
We  are  investing  a  noumenon  with  phenomenal  at- 
tributes. We  speak  of  it  with  a  prom^o  "as  if."  It 
is  only  on  the  assumption  of  the  symbolic  signifi- 
cance of  those  statements  of  Kant  which  relate  to 
the  commerce  of  the  noumenon  of  freedom  with 
the  phenomenon  that  his  theory  can  be  properly 
articulated,  and  the  various  parts  of  it  so  disposed 
as  to  avoid  clashing  with  each  other. 

I  have  devoted  so  much  of  my  time  to  exposition 
as  to  leave  little  room  for  criticism.  But  as,  in  that 
part  of  this  paper  which  is  devoted  to  the  theory  of 
freedom,  my  main  object  has  been  exposition,  I 
shall  not  regret  this  circumstance  and  shall  state 
my  points  of  criticism  very  briefly.  They  are  of 
two  kinds :  practical  and  metaphysical.  The  at- 
tempt to  formulate  at  all  or  to  represent,  even  in 
symbolic  fashion,  the  relation  of  the  supersensible 
to  the  sensible  world  is  ever  fraught  with  grave 
moral  perils.  There  are  two  alternative  positions 
between  which  those  who  undertake  such  attempts 
are  sure  to  oscillate,  two  horns  of  a  dilemma  on 
either  one  or  the  other  of  which  they  are  certain  to 
be  impaled.  Either  the  phenomenal  is  noumenal- 
ized,  or  the  noumenal  is  phenomenalized ;    either 


FELIX   ADLER  331 

the  relative,  the  human,  is  invested  with  an  abso- 
lute character  and  thus  acquires  a  degree  of  rigidity 
which  deprives  it  of  hfe,  or  the  absolute  is  degraded 
to  the  level  of  the  relative  and  thus  loses  its  abso- 
lute character.  A  result  of  this  nature  has  attended 
Kant's  undertaking.  He  tells  us  that  the  empirical 
character  is  but  the  unfolding  in  time  of  a  nou- 
menal  choice,  taken  outside  the  realm  of  time. 
If  this  be  so,  then  it  follows  that  the  hope  of  moral 
regeneration  is  cut  off;  and  on  the  most  obvious 
grounds  of  practical  morality  we  must  protest. 
To  say  that  the  empirical  character  is  merely  the 
apparition  of  the  noumenal  is  tantamount  to  say- 
ing that  we  cannot  really  become  other  than  what 
we  have  been,  that  we  can  only,  as  circumstances 
favor  or  inhibit,  bring  to  light  that  moral  self  in 
us  which  has  been  and  is  and  will  ever  be  the 
same.  But  this  is  to  deny  our  dearest  moral  hope. 
From  the  standpoint  of  practical  morahty,  we  are 
bound,  on  the  contrary,  to  say  that  we  can  always 
transcend  our  former  selves,  that  we  can  really 
become  different  beings,  that  our  choice  is  not  be- 
yond recall,  that  a  new  choice  is  open  to  us  every 
day  and  every  hour.  The  following  alternative, 
it  seems  to  me,  so  far  as  Kant  is  concerned,  is  not 
to  be  evaded.  Either  he  must  make  the  character 
a  rigid  thing  and  introduce  noumenal  inflexibility 
into  the  empirical  will;  or,  if  he  were  to  admit 
the  possibility  of  genuine  moral  change,  he  would  be 
constrained  to  introduce  change  into  the  noumenon 
itself  and  thus  abolish  its  noumenal  character. 


332  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

The  other  class  of  objections  is  metaphysical. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  state  the  objections  that 
lie  against  the  Kantian  deduction  of  the  possibility 
of  freedom.  Admitting  that  natural  causality 
applies  only  to  phenomena,  it  follows  that  another 
kind  of  causahty,  operating  over  and  above  or  out- 
side of  the  time  series,  is  thinkable.  Thus  far  we 
must,  I  think,  assent  to  Kant's  argument.  We 
are  bound  to  remember  that  the  temporal  series 
of  antecedents  and  consequents  is  a  fragment  in- 
capable of  being  extended  so  as  to  touch  a  start- 
ing-point or  to  merge  into  a  final  end.  Natural 
and  libertarian  causality  are  contradictory  only  on 
the  assumption  that  a  past  eternity  has  actually 
elapsed,  that  the  whole  series  of  natural  causes 
exists  objectively,  independently  of  our  subjective 
ability  to  survey  it,  that  it  lies  like  some  silent 
world  which  has  never  been  visited,  like  the  Pole, 
which  has  not  been  reached,  but  of  which  we  know, 
all  the  same,  that  it  is  objectively  existent.  If  the 
whole  series  of  antecedents  be  supposed  to  exist 
in  this  fashion,  ready  to  appear  to  an  intelligence 
capable  of  winging  its  flight  so  far,  then,  indeed, 
natural  causality  precludes  any  other  kind  of  caus- 
ality, then  determinism  swallows  up  liberty,  and 
the  problem  of  freedom  cannot  even  be  raised. 
But  if  we  distinguish  between  the  infinite  expansion 
of  possible  experience  and  the  possibility  of  an  in- 
finite experience,  as  Kant  does,  then  the  law  of 
natural  causality  is  merely  a  provisional  device  for 


FELIX   ADLER  333 

the  arrangement  of  phenomena  with  a  view  to  our 
subjective  mastery  of  them,  a  device  which  does 
not  yield  final  truth  and  does  not  exclude  recourse  to 
other  modes  of  interpretation,  if,  for  valid  reasons, 
we  find  ourselves  called  upon  to  resort  to  them. 

To  this  extent,  then,  I  should  agree  with  Kant. 
But  he  takes  a  further  step,  and  here  my  agree- 
ment with  him  ceases.  We  may  think  of  the  nou- 
menon,  he  says,  as  that  unknown  X  which  lies 
behind  the  screen  of  phenomena,  a  mere  ideal 
point  to  which  attaches  our  logical  demand  for 
totality.  We  may  also  think  of  it,  he  goes  on  to 
say,  as  a  cause  which  produces  effects  in  the  time 
series,  and  which  has  relations  to  and  commerce 
with  a  certain  particular  class  of  phenomena.  The 
noumenon  in  the  first  sense  is  the  noumenon  of 
the  world  in  general.  The  noumenon  in  the  second 
sense  is  our  human  noumenon,  that  which  corre- 
sponds to  and  serves  as  a  point  of  attachment  for 
the  idea  of  a  unified  or  moral  personality.  It  is 
this  notion  of  intercourse  between  two  wholly 
disparate  orders  of  existence  that  creates  all  the 
difficulties,  the  insuperable  difficulties,  with  which 
his  doctrine  of  freedom  is  embarrassed. 

The  metaphysical  objections  are  these.  There 
are  two  factors  to  the  combined  use  of  which  the 
human  mind  is  unalterably  committed  by  its  very 
constitution.  The  one  is  a  manifold  of  some  kind, 
as  a  datum;  the  other,  the  synthetic  process  in 
some  one  of  its  various  modes.     Within  the  field 


334  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

of  experience  Kant  realizes  that  these  two  factors 
are  inseparable,  that  unity  is  meaningless  unless  it 
be  the  unity  of  a  manifold  of  some  sort.  Outside 
of  the  field  of  experience  he  seeks  to  cut  the  cord 
which  connects  these  Siamese  twins,  to  break  the 
contract  by  which  these  two  mutually  dependent 
correlatives,  these  everlasting  partners,  are  associ- 
ated, and  to  establish  a  synthesis  in  vacuo,  to  treat 
the  rational  factor  which  contributes  the  element  of 
unity  to  experience  as  if  it  were  capable  not  only  of 
existing  by  itself,  but  of  becoming  the  cause  of  effects. 
This  attempt  to  set  off  by  itself  one  of  a  brace  of 
correlatives,  to  cut  with  one  of  a  pair  of  shears,  seems 
to  me  the  capital  metaphysical  error. 

A  second  error  seems  to  lie  in  the  assumption, 
which  is  fundamental  to  Kant's  argument,  that 
effect  and  cause  need  not  be  the  same  in  kind,  caus- 
ality merely  implying  dependence,  and  not  involv- 
ing an  intrinsic  connection.  Now  it  is  true  that 
the  effect  is  never  wholly  identical  with  the  cause 
but,  in  some  respects,  differs  from  it,  else  it  would 
be  impossible,  even  in  thought,  to  hold  the  two 
apart.  And  yet,  not  only  is  there,  despite  the  dif- 
ference, a  fundamental  identity,  a  common  sub- 
stance necessarily  presumed  to  underlie  all  changes, 
but  the  changes  themselves  must  be  reducible  to  a 
common  denominator,  as  when  the  physicist  at- 
tempts to  explain  all  the  manifestations  of  energy 
in  Nature  as  modes  of  motion.  Nor  can  we 
establish   a   firm  connection   between  effects  and 


FELIX  ABLER  335 

causes  until  we  have  satisfied  both  requirements ; 
until  we  have  found  or  assumed  an  unchanging 
somewhat  that  underlies  the  change,  and  have 
discovered  a  common  process  of  which  all  the 
changes  may  be  explained  as  variations.  Now, 
it  is  evident  that,  while  Kant  may  be  admitted  to 
have  proved  the  possible  identity  of  substance,  as 
between  noumenon  and  phenomenon,  he  has  not 
shown  the  common  process  of  which  the  phenom- 
enal and  noumenal  happenings  are  the  modes, 
and,  in  default  of  such  a  demonstration,  it  is  not 
legitimate  to  refer  phenomenal  effects  to  noume- 
nal causes.  Such  differences  as  may  properly  be 
allowed  to  exist  between  effect  and  cause  are 
differences  within  the  same  order,  not  differences 
between  one  order  and  a  wholly  different  order. 
Moreover,  the  statement  of  Kant  that  causahty 
implies  merely  dependence  and  not  intrinsic  con- 
nection shows  that  he  transfers  what  is  only  true 
of  phenomena  to  noumena.  In  the  case  of  the 
former,  precisely  because  they  are  only  phenomena, 
we  must  rest  content  with  a  merely  extrinsic  nexus. 
But  a  noumenal  cause  is  one  the  very  assumption 
of  which  implies  an  attempt  to  satisfy  our  logical 
demand  for  a  complete  account  of  the  relation  be- 
tween cause  and  effect,  and  a  complete  account 
must  show  the  intrinsic  bond  between  the  two. 

At  this  point,  and  before  passing  to  other  parts 
of  my  subject,  I  may  perhaps  attempt  to  indicate 
succinctly  my  own  attitude  toward  the  question  of 


336  THE   ETHICS  OF  KANT 

freedom,  as  I  have  been  requested  to  do.  The 
problem  of  moral  spontaneity  or  free  will  seems 
to  me  to  be  only  a  special  case  of  the  problem  of 
mental  spontaneity.  Is  it  true  that  the  mind  can 
act  spontaneously  ?  Is  it  true  that  it  can  react  in 
an  original  way  on  the  data  of  sensation  presented 
to  it  ?  When  the  key  of  sensation  is  thrust  into  our 
mental  lock  is  there  a  bolt  shot  that  holds  fast 
experience  and  prevents  the  treasures  we  gather 
from  being  scattered  to  the  winds  ?  Does  there 
occur  an  act  of  unification  ?  If  so,  then  this  act  of 
unification  is  an  act  of  mental  spontaneity  strictly 
speaking,  itself  not  explicable  in  terms  of  that 
manifold,  of  the  coherence  of  which  it  is  the  prior 
condition.  Thus,  in  a  certain  sense,  we  are  en- 
titled, instead  of  narrowing  the  territory  of  freedom, 
rather  to  extend  it,  instead  of  wondering  and 
doubting  whether  we  can  vindicate  the  existence 
of  freedom  in  one  aspect  of  our  mental  fife,  rather 
to  wonder  at  the  suggestion  that  there  should  not 
be  freedom  in  the  mental  life  as  seen  from  one 
particular  point  of  view,  since  freedom,  spontan- 
eity, is  the  characteristic  of  our  mental  life  from 
every  point  of  view.  I  do  not  say,  of  course,  that 
we  can  explain  this  fundamental  act  of  unity  in  any 
of  its  manifestations.  I  only  claim  that  it  is  not 
more  inexplicable  in  that  aspect  of  the  mental  life 
which  we  call  volition  than  in  any  other.  The 
fundamental  question  is:  how  the  one  and  the 
many  can  embrace,  how  it  comes  to  pass  that  all 


FELIX  ABLER  337 

that  is  highest  in  us,  our  science,  our  art,  our  ethics, 
should  be  the  offspring  of  this  marriage  of  two  such 
ahen  opposites  as  the  one  and  the  manifold.  And 
to  this  question  there  is  no  answer.  We  are  so  con- 
stituted. As  a  matter  of  fact,  truth,  beauty,  and 
goodness  are  the  children  of  this  pair  who  are  for- 
ever fleeing  and  forever  seeking  each  other,  for- 
ever clamoring  to  be  divorced  on  the  ground  of 
radical  incompatibility,  and  forever  unable  to  en- 
dure the  absence  of  each  other's  society.  How 
there  can  be  mental  spontaneity  is  the  insoluble 
problem,  soluble  only  in  a  practical  way,  namely, 
by  the  assurance  that  there  is.  Every  time  a  mathe- 
matician conceives  the  notion  of  uniform  space, 
or  a  physicist  the  notion  of  uniform  time,  he  per- 
forms an  act  of  mental  freedom.  Every  time  w^e 
mark  off  a  set  of  relatively  constant  processes  and 
regard  them  collectively,  i.  e.,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  unity,  as  an  object  or  a  thing,  we  are  per- 
forming an  act  of  mental  freedom.  The  chain  of 
causes  and  effects,  of  antecedents  and  consequents, 
a  chain  which  hangs  loose  in  air  at  both  ends,  never- 
theless, so  far  as  link  is  interlocked  with  link,  is  a 
product  of  our  mental  freedom.  Natural  causa- 
tion itself,  w^hich  seems  to  fetter  us  as  if  we  were 
slaves,  is  a  fetter  which  we  ourselves  have  forged 
in  the  workshop  of  mental  freedom.  The  world, 
so  far  as  we  can  speak  of  a  world  —  and  we  can  only 
speak  of  it  by  a  species  of  poetic  license ;  Nature, 
or  this  fragment   of   Nature   of   which   w^e   have 

22 


338  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

knowledge,  which  we  have  made  in  our  own  mental 
image,  or,  at  least,  stamped  with  our  mental  image, 
which,  in  this  sense,  we  have  not  merely  reproduced 
but  created.  Nature,  I  say,  with  all  the  causahty 
that  obtains  in  it,  is  the  evidence  and  the  witness 
of  our  mental  freedom. 

And  yet,  of  course,  there  is  a  distinction  be- 
tween moral  and  mental  freedom.  Though  the  fet- 
ter be  forged  by  our  own  hands,  it  binds  us  none 
the  less  securely.  And  the  problem,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  is  really  this :  not  how  freedom  is  possible, 
for  the  answer  to  that  question  simply  is,  it  is  possi- 
ble inasmuch  as  it  is  actual,  but  how  is  one  kind 
of  freedom  consistent  with  another  kind,  the  kind 
of  spontaneity  which  we  mean  when  we  think  of 
vohtion,  with  that  kind  of  freedom  which  operates 
in  constructive  science  ?  And  what  is  the  distinc- 
tion between  these  two  ?  Briefly,  to  my  mind,  the 
distinction  is  this.  The  act  of  unification,  which  is 
involved  in  science,  is  a  synthesis  of  causes.  The 
act  of  unification,  involved  in  ethics,  is  a  synthesis 
of  ends.  The  face  of  science  is  turned  backward. 
It  seeks  to  explain  the  present  in  terms  of  the  past. 
The  face  of  ethics  is  turned  forward.  It  seeks  to 
determine  the  present  with  reference  to  results  to 
be  attained  in  the  future.  .  Or,  to  go  a  step  farther, 
the  ultimate  distinction  between  science  and  ethics, 
is  it  not  this?  The  manifold  with  which  science 
deals,  which  it  is  its  business  to  unify,  is  given 
in  sensation,  in  experience.     The  manifold   with 


FELIX  ADLER  339 

which  ethics  deals  is  not  given,  not  supplied  at 
all  from  without,  but  is  a  purely  ideal  manifold. 
Granted  that,  being  so  made  as  we  are,  the  union 
of  the  one  and  the  many  is  the  burden  of  every 
song  we  sing,  is  the  theme  of  that  intellectual 
music  in  obedience  to  the  strains  of  which  our 
world,  the  little  w^orld  we  inhabit,  is  built  up,  — 
granted  that  this  is  so,  we  find  that  in  the  field 
of  science  our  hberty  is  restricted  by  the  circum- 
stance that  the  manifold,  which  it  is  of  the  essence 
of  our  intelligence  to  seek  to  unify,  is  forced  upon 
us,  as  an  unalterable  datum,  to  which  we  must  ac- 
commodate ourselves  in  order  to  master  it,  and 
w^hich  yet  we  can  never  wholly  master  because  of 
the  irrational  residuum  wliich  remains  in  it,  de- 
spite our  utmost  efforts  to  rationahze  it,  because 
it  is,  in  the  ultimate  analysis,  intractable  and  un- 
congenial to  our  intelligences.  And  therefore, 
aiming  at  a  highest  manifestation  of  our  construc- 
tive hberty,  seeking  an  utterly  free  field  for  the 
achievement  of  rational  synthesis,  we  figure  to  our- 
selves the  idea  of  a  manifold  which  shall  be  wholly 
tractable,  of  such  differenticB  in  which  shall  wholly 
be  expressed  the  underlying  unity,  of  such  unity  as 
shall  wholly  embrace  and  absorb  in  itself  the  op- 
posing plurality.  And  it  is  by  this  means,  by 
freeing  the  notion  of  the  manifold  from  the  restrict- 
ing conditions  to  which  as  a  datum  ah  extra  it  is 
subjected,  by  transcending  the  bounds  of  experi- 
ence and  taking  the  notion  of  the  manifold  in  an 


340  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

unlimited  sense,  as  "manifold  in  general,"  by  con- 
ceiving the  two  antipodal  poles  between  which  our 
intellectual  life  plays,  as  ideally  harmonized,  it  is 
by  such  means  that  we  arrive  at  the  organic  ideal, 
or  the  ethical  ideal.  For  the  two  are  identical. 
The  organic  ideal  is  that  of  an  infinite  system  of 
correlated  parts,  each  of  which  is  necessary  to 
express  the  meaning  of  the  whole,  and  in  each  of 
which  the  whole  is  present  as  an  abiding  and  con- 
troUing  force.  The  ethical  ideal  is  produced  by 
applying  this  purely  spiritual  conception  of  an  in- 
finite organism  to  human  society.  To  act  as  if  my 
fellow- beings  and  as  if  I  myself  were  members  of 
such  an  infinite  system  in  which  the  manifold  and 
the  one  are  wholly  reconciled  is  to  act  morally.  So 
act,  not  as  if  the  rule  of  thy  action  were  to  become 
a  universal  law  for  all  rational  beings  (for  I  shall 
presently  endeavor  to  show  that  this  is  impossible), 
but  so  act  that  through  thine  action  the  ideal  of  an 
infinite  spiritual  organism  may  become  more  and 
more  potent  and  real  in  thine  own  life  and  in  that 
of  all  thy  fellow-beings. 

And  how  is  this  ethical  kind  of  freedom  com- 
patible with  the  other  kind  which  expresses  itself 
in  forging  the  chain  of  natural  causality  ?  The 
two  are  compatible  only  because  they  refer  to 
totally  different  sides  of  the  same  act.  Natural 
causality  deals  with  the  manifold  that  is  given. 
It  seeks  to  piece  together  the  parts  of  it  as  they  ap- 
pear in  the  time  series,  to  relate  each  successor  to 


FELIX  ADLER  341 

its  predecessor.  Moral  causality  deals  with  a  man- 
ifold that  is  not  given.  It  signifies  the  force  in  us 
of  an  idea,  namely,  of  the  idea  of  a  final  recon- 
ciliation of  Unity  and  Plurality,  whereof  experi- 
ence presents  no  example,  and  which,  nevertheless, 
in  consequence  of  the  inborn  desire  to  harmonize 
the  two  conflicting  tendencies  of  our  nature,  we 
are  compelled  to  propose  to  ourselves  as  our  high- 
est end.  Moral  causality  leaves  natural  causality 
intact  in  its  own  sphere  and  uses  it.  Natural 
causality  may  be  compared  to  the  shuttle  that 
runs  backward  and  forward  weaving,  according 
to  unalterable  mechanical  laws,  the  web  and  woof 
of  existence.  Moral  causality,  our  "best  card"  in 
more  senses  than  one,  may  be  compared  to  the  pat- 
tern in  accord  with  which  the  web  is  to  be  woven. 
(Technically  speaking,  the  fatal  error  that  vitiates 
Kant's  Transcendental  Dialectic  is  to  be  found  in 
the  proposition  that  the  idea  of  the  unconditioned 
arises  solely  a  tergo.  Any  existing  thing  whatso- 
ever being  conditioned,  he  says,  necessarily  presup- 
poses the  idea  of  a  preceding  sum  of  conditions 
adequate  to  account  for  its  existence,  or  the  idea 
of  an  unconditioned.  But  we  are  not  equally  con- 
strained, he  maintains,  to  look  beyond  the  present 
and  to  think  of  the  multitudinous  consequences 
of  that  which  now  is  as  converging  toward  a  future 
unconditioned.  So  far  as  we  are  mere  spectators 
of  the  show,  inquisitive  of  causes,  this  is  true.  But, 
inasmuch  as  we  are  also  actors,  and  since  each  end 


342  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

of  action  that  we  propose  to  ourselves  has  only 
relative  significance,  we  are  forced,  would  we  sat- 
isfy the  demand  for  unity  in  the  choice  of  ends,  to 
push  forward  in  anticipation  toward  some  ultimate 
end  to  which  all  our  minor  ends  may  be  related  as 
means.  The  unconditioned  of  the  future,  there- 
fore, necessarily  arises  for  us  in  the  field  of  conduct 
or  of  ethics,  and  the  idea  of  the  complete  merging 
into  one  another  of  the  manifold  and  the  one  ap- 
pears to  me,  if  not  the  absolute  end,  the  highest 
and  clearest  representative  symbol  of  it  to  which 
we  are  capable  of  attaining.) 

Having  thus,  in  bare  outline,  indicated  my  ac- 
ceptance of  the  doctrine  of  freedom  on  other  than 
Kantian  grounds  and  with  a  meaning  assigned  to 
it  different  from  his,  let  me  now  pass  on  to  other 
points  of  criticism.  The  connection  between  the 
"Kritik  of  Pure  Reason"  and  that  of  the  "Prac- 
tical Reason"  is  close  and  must  ever  be  borne  in 
mind.  Kant  is  the  philosophical  exponent  and 
champion  of  the  universal  reign  of  law.  Through- 
out the  "Kritik"  it  is  his  aim  to  fortify  our  confi- 
dence in  the  validity  of  natural  laws.  To  this  end, 
he  demonstrates  the  existence  in  the  mind  itself  of 
the  types  of  which  these  laws  are  the  replicas.  He 
discovers  in  the  mind  itself  the  philosopher *s  stone 
which  transmutes  associations  into  laws.  By  what 
right  do  we  speak  of  physical  laws  at  all  ?  he  asks. 
What  is  the  law- creating  element  which  gives  to 
these  so-called  laws  their  lawful  character  ?    These 


FELIX  ADLER  343 

are  the  questions  which  in  the  "Kritik"  he  puts. 
And   the   various  forms   of  the   synthetic  process 
furnish  the  answers  to  them.    Kant  is  the  philoso- 
pher of  physical  law.     His  metaphysical  concepts 
are  intended  to  buttress  and  support  the  throne  of 
physical  law.     And  as  to  his  fundamental  ethical 
principle,  this  again  turns  out  to  be  nothing  more 
than  the  disembodied  ghost  of  physical  law,  just 
the  sheer  idea  of  absolute  lawfulness  applied  to 
conduct,  just  the  bare  notion  of  necessity  and  uni- 
versality in  action,  without  regard  to  the  content 
of  the  act.     There  is  no  sunlight  in  Kant's  moral 
world.    All  moral  acts  in  themselves  considered  are 
as   dead   and   cold   as   the   satellite   that   revolves 
around  our  earth,  and  the  light  of  universality  and 
necessity,  with  which  they  shine,  is  reflected  and 
comes   to   them   from   an   unseen   luminary   lying 
beyond  our  horizon.    Now,  in  replying  to  this  view, 
let  it  be  remembered  that  the  notion  of  necessity 
and  universality,  in  the  "Kritik  of  Pure  Reason," 
is  always  presented  as  the  concomitant  of  the  syn- 
thetic processes.     Something  occurs  in  conscious- 
ness, namely,  the  synthetic  process  in  one  of  its 
various  forms,  and,  in  virtue  of  the  constitution  of 
our  minds,  w^e  realize  that  this  process,  this  act  of 
unification,  is  necessary  and  universally  valid  for 
ourselves  and  for  all  rational  beings  hke  ourselves. 
Something  happens  which  we  recognize  as  neces- 
sary.   But  in  the  "Kritik  of  the  Practical  Reason" 
necessity  and  universality,  these  concomitants  of 


344  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

something  else,  are  represented  as  if  an  independ- 
ent authority  belonged  to  them,  as  if  they  were  co- 
gent in  their  own  right.  This  is  not  and  cannot 
be  the  case.  And  here  we  light  upon  the  flaw  in 
Kant's  ethical  principle.  Here  we  see  why  his 
ethics  is  so  unconvincing.  It  is,  I  repeat,  because 
that  which  is  cogent  only  as  the  concomitant  of 
something  else  is  represented  by  him  as  if  it  were 
cogent  on  its  own  account.  I  do  not  admit,  as  is 
often  asserted,  that  it  is  the  formal  character  of 
Kant's  ethical  principle  that  makes  it  unsatisfying. 
The  principle  of  causality,  too,  is  a  purely  formal 
one,  and  yet  it  is  fruitful  and  convincing  enough. 
Rather  is  it  the  failure  of  Kant  to  point  out,  as  un- 
derlying ethics,  some  specific,  synthetic  process 
capable  of  being  apprehended  by  us  as  necessary 
and  universal  that  makes  his  ethics  sterile.  It  is  a 
ghost,  the  ghost  of  natural  law,  which  we  are  asked 
to  accept  as  the  oracle  of  conduct.  Kant's  Cate- 
gorical Imperative  comes  to  us  with  the  impact  of 
a  blow  on  the  head.  "Thou  shalt."  Why.?  We 
are  forbidden  even  to  ask  that  question.  One  is 
sometimes  tempted  to  think  that  the  spirit  of  the 
Prussian  Army,  as  it  was  handled  in  the  days  of 
Frederick  the  Great,  Kant's  contemporary,  has 
entered,  in  the  shape  of  the  Categorical  Imperative, 
into  the  domain  of  philosophy,  that  the  Imperative 
of  the  metaphysician  is  a  kind  of  echo  of  the  com- 
mands of  the  corporal.  But,  if  we  take  heart,  never- 
theless, and  reflect  upon  the  way  we  are  thus  bidden 


FELIX  ADLER  345 

to  act,  if  we  imagine  a  state  of  human  society  in 
which  every  man  would  be  a  perfect  moral  agent, 
according  to  Kant's  formula,  i.  e.,  a  state  of  society 
in  which  every  act  of  every  human  being  would  have 
the  character  of  necessity  and  universality,  and 
then  ask  ourselves  whether  such  a  state  of  society 
would  really  represent  to  us  the  perfect  moral  order ; 
whether  we  should  be  able  to  dwell  upon  it  with 
satisfaction,  1  think  the  answer  would  be  in  the 
negative.  Suppose  the  goal,  as  Kant  conceives  of 
it,  to  have  been  reached ;  but  what  has  been  gained  ? 
Suppose  that  every  word  spoken  and  every  deed 
done  is  determined  by  this  abstract  idea  of  univer- 
sality and  necessity.  Suppose  that  men  act  with 
the  precision  of  conscious  automata.  But  in  what 
respect  would  the  moral  order  thus  painfully  estab- 
lished —  if  ever  it  could  be  —  be  superior  to  the 
physical  order  ?  The  inhalation  and  exhalation  of 
breath,  the  discharge  of  the  basest  animal  func- 
tions, the  fall  of  a  stone,  are  marked  by  the  same 
universality  and  necessity.  Consciousness,  in- 
deed, would  be  superadded.  The  machine  would 
be  aware  of  the  turning  of  its  wheels.  But  this, 
considered  as  the  net  outcome  of  "the  travailing 
and  the  groaning,"  is  hardly  an  inspiring  outlook. 
And  moreover,  even  this  result,  the  perfect  auto- 
matism plus  consciousness,  could  only  be  attained 
in  the  last  days,  at  the  end  of  evolution,  in  the  far 
distant  future.  While,  in  the  long  interval,  the 
consciousness  which  is  superadded  would  be  dis- 


346  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

tinctly  a  disturbing  factor  inhibiting  instincts 
which  might  have  been  surer  guides,  confusing 
and  often  baffling  our  decisions.  Kant's  ethics  is 
a  species  of  physics.  His  moral  law  is  natural  law 
dipped  in  the  bath  of  consciousness.  The  funda- 
mental flaw  is  that  he  represents  the  joint  notion 
of  necessity  and  of  universality,  which  is  cogent 
only  as  the  accompaniment  of  the  synthetic  process, 
as  if  cogent  on  its  own  account. 

The  next  point  of  criticism  is  that  Kant's  con- 
ception of  morality  is  projected  so  far  into  the  em- 
pyrean that  there  seems  to  be  no  bridge  by  which  it 
can  be  connected  with  the  actual  sublunary  world. 
According  to  Kant,  a  moral  act  is  one  which  is  per- 
formed exclusively  out  of  respect  for  the  idea  of 
necessity  and  universality.  Now,  as  he  admits,  it 
cannot  be  proved  that  such  an  act  has  ever  been 
performed,  and  hence  it  follows  that  the  existence 
anywhere  of  moral  beings  becomes  doubtful.  For 
what  is  a  moral  being  ?  Shall  we  say  a  being  capa- 
ble of  moral  acts,  capable  only,  without  our  having 
adequate  reason  to  think  that  this  capacity  has 
ever  expressed  itself?  Kant  doubtless  would  say 
that  a  moral  being  is  one  who  acknowledges  the 
obligation  to  act  morally,  whether  he  does  so  or 
not,  one  who  recognizes  in  himself  the  sort  of  con- 
straint which  is  due  to  the  working,  as  he  would 
explain,  of  the  idea  of  universality  and  necessity. 
But  have  we  any  ground  for  supposing  that  the 
preponderant  majority  of  men   are  even  faintly 


FELIX  ADLER  347 

moved  by  this  idea  of  universality  and  necessity, 
that  they  stand  inwardly  in  awe  and  reverence  be- 
fore it,  or  that  they  feel  the  obligation  of  purging 
the  springs  of  their  conduct  of  every  other  motive 
except  that  of  respect  for  necessity  and  universality  ? 
And  if  we  have  no  ground  for  supposing  this,  then, 
also,  have  we  no  ground  for  regarding  the  prepon- 
derant majority  of  mankind  as  moral  beings.  We 
cannot  even  be  sure  that  we  ourselves,  who  walk 
on  the  upper  levels  of  abstract  thinking,  are  moral 
beings !  And  hence  the  moral  law  falls  to  the 
ground  because  there  is  no  one  of  whom  we  can 
be  sure  that  he  applies  it,  and  no  one  to  whom  with 
certainty  it  can  be  applied.  Plainly,  we  are  bound 
to  act  morally  only  toward  other  moral  beings. 
If,  nevertheless,  it  is  urged  once  more  that  though 
freedom  be  absent  the  idea  of  freedom  is  present 
in  every  human  being,  even  in  the  most  humble 
and  the  most  debased,  I  must  again  reply  that  the 
idea  of  freedom,  as  Kant  interprets  it,  is  surely  not 
present  in  the  minds  of  the  ignorant  or  of  the 
vicious.  And,  if  we  are  to  continue  to  regard  every 
one  who  wears  the  human  form  as  a  moral  being, 
and  as  one  toward  whom  we  are  bound  to  behave 
morally,  it  must  be  on  other  grounds  than  those 
with  which  Kant  supplies  us. 

The  next  objection  is  that  the  practical  moral 
commands  are  incapable  of  being  derived  from  the 
Kantian  formula.  It  is  a  matter  of  surprise  that 
this  difficulty  has  not  more  clearly  forced  itself  on 


348  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

the  attention  of  the  many  thinkers  who  have 
trodden  in  Kant's  footsteps.  The  duties  which  all 
recognize  as  moral  cannot  be  derived  from  the  bare 
idea  of  lawfulness.  There  is  a  fallacy  involved  in 
Kant's  reasoning,  there  is  a  false  assumption  under- 
lying it.  To  show  what  this  is,  let  us  take  up  his 
own  examples  of  the  moral  commands  or  duties  and 
observe  the  method  by  which  he  endeavors  to  de- 
duce them  from  his  formula.  All  that  is  requisite, 
he  tells  us,  in  order  to  decide  in  a  given  case  whether 
a  contemplated  act  is  moral  or  not,  is  in  thought 
to  universalize  it,  that  is,  to  suppose  that  all  men 
should  act  in  the  same  way.  If,  on  this  hypoth- 
esis, it  is  still  consistent  to  act  in  this  manner,  then 
the  act  is  moral.  Self- consistency,  on  the  basis  of 
universality,  is  the  test.  For  instance,  take  the  case 
of  veracity.  A  man  ponders  whether  it  is  morally 
right  or  wrong  to  tell  a  lie.  Let  him  assume  that  all 
men  should  make  it  their  rule  in  their  communi- 
cations with  their  fellows  to  speak,  not  the  truth, 
but  the  opposite  of  it.  Under  such  circumstances, 
would  not  the  entire  advantage  of  lying  disappear  ? 
Would  it  be  consistent  for  a  man,  that  is,  consistent 
with  the  object  which  he  hopes  to  gain,  to  prevari- 
cate ?  A  man  lies,  says  Kant,  on  the  assumption 
that  others,  that  the  world  at  large  will  stick  to  the 
truth.  If  every  one  else  should  lie,  what  profit 
would  there  be  for  him  in  doing  so  ?  The  same 
holds  good,  he  tells  us,  with  regard  to  theft.  A  man 
may  fail  to  respect  the  property  of  others  so  long 


FELIX  ADLER  349 

as  he  expects  they  that  will  be  good-natured 
enough  to  respect  his  own.  If  stealing  were  to 
become  general  what  would  it  profit  anyone  to 
steal  ?  The  same,  again,  applies  to  the  duty  of 
charity.  A  man  may  refuse  to  aid  a  fellow- being 
in  distress,  but  he  cannot  desire  that  it  shall  become 
the  accepted  rule  to  leave  the  sick,  the  starving, 
the  indigent  to  their  fate.  He  can  easily  enough 
realize  that  a  time  may  come  when  he  will  be  de- 
pendent on  the  good  offices  of  others,  and  that  the 
rule  which  he  had  sanctioned  in  the  day  of  his 
strength  would  seem  wicked  enough  to  him  in  the 
day  of  his  weakness.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
observe  that  it  is  not  the  gospel  of  enlightened  self- 
interest  that  Kant  teaches.  He  uses  self-interest 
not  as  a  motive  but  as  a  criterion.  That  which 
would  be  to  our  interest,  if  one  and  the  same  rule 
of  action  were  adopted  by  all,  whether  actually  it 
be  adopted  by  them  or  not,  —  that  is  moral.  But 
what  an  absurdly  short  cut  is  this  toward  solving 
the  most  intricate  and  complex  of  all  practical 
questions,  —  the  question,  what  is  right  ?  what 
is  obligatory  ?  what  is  my  duty  ?  Contrasted  with 
the  sublime  flight  which  he  takes  into  the  region 
of  the  noumenal  in  order  to  obtain  his  first  princi- 
ple, this  device  to  which  he  resorts  for  obtaining 
the  laws  of  the  noumenal  as  they  reflect  themselves 
in  the  world  of  phenomena,  I  must  say,  seems  to 
me  a  veritable  anti-climax.  We  can  explain  it  per- 
haps by  calling  to  mind  that  Kant  devoted  the 


350  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

major  part  of  his  life  to  the  investigation  of  physi- 
cal laws  and  of  the  fundamental  principles  that 
underlie  them,  and  that  he  gave  to  ethics,  not  in- 
tentionally but  actually,  the  crumbs  that  fell  from 
the  table  of  physics,  the  remnant  of  the  strength 
of  his  dechning  years.  But  let  us  see  wherein  con- 
sists the  false  assumption  implied  in  his  method. 
To  take  up  first  the  case  of  theft.  If  stealing 
were  to  become  general,  Kant  says,  it  would  be 
absurd  to  steal.  The  one  who  despoils  another 
does  so  in  the  hope  of  keeping  as  his  property  what 
he  seizes.  If  property  rights  were  not  respected  at 
all,  the  thief  might  as  well  dip  his  hand  into  the 
sea,  with  a  view  of  grasping  and  keeping  a  part  of 
it,  as  into  his  neighbor's  pocket.  The  fallacy  un- 
derlying this  reasoning  is  the  assumption  that,  if 
all  men  were  minded  to  take  away  the  possessions 
of  others,  they  would  all  be  equally  able  to  do  so, 
the  assumption  that  all  men  are  equal,  if  not  com- 
pletely, yet  to  all  practical  intents  and  purposes. 
And  this  assumption  he  shares  with  the  leading 
thinkers  of  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
It  was  the  same  undemonstrable  hypothesis  that 
underlay  the  doctrines  of  the  laissez-faire  school  in 
economics ;  the  same  hypothesis,  blindly  accepted, 
that  inspired  the  political  reasonings  of  Rousseau, 
that  expressed  itself  in  the  French  Declaration 
of  the  Rights  of  Man,  and  in  the  American  Decla- 
ration of  Independence,  the  assumption,  namely, 
that  all  men  are  born  equal.     Strange  as  this  view 


FELIX  ADLER  351 

appears  to  us,  we  can  very  well  understand  how  it 
arose  as  a  reaction  against  the  artificial  inequali- 
ties which  the  feudal  system  had  introduced  in 
European  society.  It  was  natural  for  those  who 
rebelled  against  those  artificial  inequalities  to  go 
to  the  opposite  extreme  of  supposing  that  all  ine- 
qualities between  man  and  man  are  artificial  in 
their  origin,  and  that  if  the  prevalent  hierarchical 
system  of  caste  could  be  swept  away  and  men  be 
revealed  in  their  true  nature,  as  they  come  from 
the  hands  of  the  Creator,  it  would  be  found  that 
no  inequalities  existed  between  them,  at  least, 
none  that  might  not  be  regarded  as  negligible.  It 
is  this  doctrinaire  assumption  of  eighteenth  cen- 
tury speculation  that  we  find  involved  in  Kant's 
attempted  deduction  of  the  practical  moral  com- 
mands from  the  idea  of  abstract  lawfulness.  If  all 
men  were  really  equal,  then  their  intent  to  rob 
each  other  of  their  possessions  would  mean  their 
ability  to  do  so.  But,  supposing  merely  the  intent 
without  the  abihty,  then  the  general  acceptance  of 
the  rule  of  stealing  would  not  make  it  inconsistent 
for  the  strong  and  unscrupulous  to  defy  the  weak, 
and  to  rest  securely  in  their  unhallowed  gains,  in 
the  midst  of  universal  lawlessness. 

The  derivation  of  the  rule  of  charity  is  open  to 
precisely  the  same  criticism.  Kant,  in  this  con- 
nection, goes  into  some  details.  The  duty  of 
assisting  the  needy  is  not  based  on  the  egoistic 
expectation  of  a  possible  quid  pro  quo.    It  is  not  a 


352  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

rule  of  do  ut  des.  We  are  not  advised  to  throw  our 
bread  upon  the  waters  in  the  hope  that  it  may  re- 
turn to  us  after  many  days.  "For  a  man,  con- 
ceivably," says  Kant,  "may  be  so  misanthropic 
and  sour  in  temper  as  to  be  quite  willing  to  enter 
into  a  contract  that  no  one  shall  ever  help  him  if 
he  can  but  have  the  satisfaction  of  withholding 
assistance  from  those  who  importune  him  for  it." 
"But,"  he  continues,  "even  such  a  misanthropist, 
pleased  as  he  might  be  for  his  own  part  to  escape 
from  the  claims  of  benevolence,  could  not  as  an 
impartial  observer  contemplate  with  approbation 
a  state  of  society  in  which  the  rule  were  general, 
that  no  one  shall  act  benevolently  toward  another." 
It  would  be  against  reason  to  approve  of  such  a 
rule.  The  argument  of  Kant  derives  its  force 
from  the  supposition  that  all  men  are  equally  de- 
pendent on  one  another,  but  it  quite  misses  fire 
if,  as  is  actually  the  case,  this  dependence  obtains 
in  highly  unequal  degrees.  It  would  not  be  incon- 
sistent, e.  g.,  for  the  miser  who  has  purchased  a  large 
annuity,  or  has  invested  in  safe  securities,  to  refuse 
to  give  alms,  trusting  to  the  extreme  improbability 
that  he  himself  shall  ever  be  in  want. 

The  next  example  is  that  of  truthfulness  and 
falsehood.  And  here,  again,  I  can  see  no  reason 
why  the  rule  of  prevarication  should  be  self-defeat- 
ing, in  case  falsehood  were  to  become  general. 
Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  how  such  a  plan 
would  work.    In  the  first  place,  there  would  be  one 


FELIX  ADLER  353 

element  of  certainty  upon  which  we  could  always 
rely.  Everything  that  a  man  said  to  us  would  be 
sure  not  to  be  true.  There  is  a  sphere  in  which 
tliis  state  of  things  is  said  to  a  considerable  extent 
to  have  prevailed,  until  recent  times,  —  the  sphere 
of  diplomacy.  Was  it,  then,  inconsistent  for  a 
diplomatist  to  follow  Talleyrand's  maxim  that  lan- 
guage is  given  us  for  the  purpose  of  concealing 
our  thoughts,  because  he  knew  that  his  fellow- 
diplomatists  would  treat  him  in  like  fashion .''  By 
no  means,  for  the  obvious  reason  that  not  all  men 
are  equally  skilled  in  concealing  their  thoughts. 
And  even  if  this  were  not  so,  the  difference  in  psy- 
chological penetration  and  in  ability  to  interpret 
the  signs,  apart  from  language,  by  which  facts  may 
be  ascertained  would  still  make  it  possible  for  the 
crafty  liar  to  attain  his  end  at  the  expense  of  his 
more  bungling  competitor.  I  do  not,  of  course, 
imply  that  the  spectacle  afforded  by  human  society, 
if  lying,  theft,  etc.,  were  to  become  the  general 
practice,  would  be  a  pleasant  one  to  contemplate. 
Nor  do  I  gainsay  that  even  the  partial  acceptance 
of  the  moral  rules  greatly  enhances  the  commodity 
of  human  existence.  What  I  deny  is  that  it  would 
not  be  consistent  for  the  stronger  and  the  more 
crafty  to  pursue  their  selfish  ends  without  scruple, 
if  all  others  tried  to  do  the  same. 

Finally,  a  word  in  this  connection  in  regard  to 
the  grounds  on  which  Kant  bases  the  prohibition  of 
suicide.     Self-love,  or  the  desire  for  happiness,  he 

23 


354  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

says,  is  a  means  to  an  end,  namely,  the  preservation 
and  enhancement  of  life.  It  would  be  inconsistent, 
he  thinks,  if  the  same  principle  which  is  designed 
for  the  enhancement  of  life  should  lead  to  the  de- 
struction of  it.  This  argument  is  so  far-fetched  and 
so  unreal  that  one  is  at  first  at  a  loss  to  decide  in 
what  sense  Kant  wishes  it  to  be  understood.  Does 
he  mean  that  Nature  has  implanted  in  man  self- 
love,  or  the  desire  for  pleasure,  for  the  ulterior 
purpose  of  preserving  and  enhancing  hfe,  pleasure 
being  the  bait,  and  life  the  end,  and  that  the  act  of 
suicide  would  therefore  exhibit  Nature  to  the  ex- 
tent that  she  is  manifested  in  man,  as  at  variance 
with  herself,  the  desire  for  pleasure  producing 
the  very  opposite  effect  of  that  which  it  was  in- 
tended to  subserve  ?  If  this  be  Kant's  meaning, 
then  we  must  say  that  the  inconsistency,  if  any  such 
there  be,  is  Nature's  and  not  man's;  that,  like  a 
bungling  workman,  she  has  failed  properly  to  ad- 
just her  means  to  her  ends;  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  bait  is  not  seductive  enough  to  produce 
the  desired  result.  And  why  should  man  be  held 
responsible  for  Nature's  failure?  But  if  Kant 
means  that  it  is  inconsistent  for  man,  from  motives 
of  self-love,  to  end  his  life,  since  self-love  is  the 
force  which  prompts  him  to  support  life,  then  the  an- 
swer is  that  this  may  be  true  of  self-love  in  the 
instinctive  stage,  but  that  it  is  not  true  when  self- 
love  has  reached  the  stage  of  reflection.  The  latter 
(reflective  self-love)  does  not  seek  pleasure  in  order 


FELIX  ADLER  355 

that  there  may  be  hfe,  but  desires  life  in  order  that 
there  may  be  the  experience  of  pleasure.  Life  is 
the  means,  and  pleasure  the  end,  and  not  conversely. 
And,  when  the  means  cease  to  be  adequate  to  the 
end,  when  life,  instead  of  yielding  a  harvest  of  joy, 
produces  only  an  evil  crop  of  pain,  it  is  not  incon- 
sistent, but  highly  consistent,  on  grounds  of  mere 
self-love  to  terminate  hfe. 

Let  us  now  briefly  summarize  the  outcome  of 
the  preceding  discussion.  Kant's  position  is  this: 
Would  you  know  what  is  a  moral  act ?  Take  any 
action  whatsoever.  Ideally  universahzc  it.  That 
is  to  say,  imagine  that  all  men  acted  in  such  a  man- 
ner. Then  if,  under  this  hypothesis,  the  act  is  self- 
consistent,  i.  e.,  if  it  does  not  defeat  its  own  purpose, 
it  is  a  moral  act.  The  reason  why  this  deduction 
breaks  down  is  because  it  is  based  on  the  error 
that  the  same  rule  of  action,  adopted  by  all  men, 
would  lead  in  each  case  to  the  same  result.  In  con- 
sequence of  the  innumerable  gradations  of  strength 
and  intelligence  that  subsist  among  men,  this  is 
not  the  case.  And  hence  the  test  of  self-consistency 
fails. 

There  are  two  functions  which  remain  to  be  per- 
formed by  the  critic  if  he  would  grasp  the  root  from 
which  the  Kantian  ethics  springs,  and  comprehend 
the  fruit  it  bears.  One  of  these  is  an  examina- 
tion of  the  Kantian  teleology,  of  the  meaning  he 
attaches  to  the  notion  of  an  "end,"  and  of  the 
illegitimate  use,  as  I  think,  which  he  makes  of  this 


356  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

notion.  This  inquiry  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
because  Kant,  while  vigorously  excluding  the  pur- 
suit of  our  own  personal  happiness  as  a  moral  end, 
enjoins  it  upon  us  as  a  moral  duty  to  promote  the 
happiness  of  others.  It  is  evident  that  he  is  com- 
pelled to  take  this  step  if  his  moral  system  is  to  be 
relieved  of  its  aspect  of  frowning  austerity,  and  is 
to  acquire  warmth  of  color  and  richness  of  content. 
We  must,  according  to  him,  repress  the  desire  for 
happiness  in  ourselves.  We  must  take  our  cue 
from  the  voice  that  echoes  through  empty  infinities. 
Not  even  the  Decalogue,  as  a  set  of  specific  com- 
mands, but,  as  it  were,  the  tone  of  thunder  in 
which  it  was  promulgated,  is  to  be  the  incentive  of 
our  personal  morality ;  and  yet  we  must  be  permit- 
ted to  take  an  interest  in  the  happiness  of  others, 
if  our  philanthropic  impulses  are  not  to  be  wholly 
thwarted.  A  merely  negative  morality,  one  which 
respects  and  forbears  to  infringe  upon  the  pre- 
cincts of  the  personality  of  others,  is  not  enough. 
We  must  be  enabled  positively  to  further  their  de- 
velopment, and  to  assist  them  in  the  attainment 
of  their  ends.  Philanthropy  demands  as  much. 
And  Kant  was  a  thorough-going  philanthropist. 
Strangely  enough,  his  extreme  rationalism  seems 
to  have  been  but  the  obverse  side  of  a  profound 
susceptibiHty  to  feeling,  so  profound,  indeed,  that 
perhaps  he  felt  all  the  more  the  need  of  curbing  it, 
a  susceptibiHty  which  helps  to  explain  the  sympa- 
thy he  felt  for  a  sentimentahst  hke  Rousseau,  de- 


FELIX  ADLER  357 

spite  the  metaphysical  differences  that  separated 
them.  Kant  felt  the  necessity  of  introducing  the 
happiness  of  others  as  an  aim  in  order  to  people  the 
moral  edifice  which  otherwise  might  have  remained 
bare  and  almost  untenanted.  But  was  he  justified 
in  so  doing  ?  Was  it  allowable  for  him,  on  the  basis 
of  his  system,  to  do  so  ?  For  my  own  part,  I  sub- 
mit that  it  w^as  not,  and  for  the  following  reasons. 
There  are,  as  Kant  maintains  in  the  "Kritik  of 
Pure  Reason"  and  elsewhere,  strictly  speaking, 
no  such  things  as  natural  ends.  The  notion  of 
telos  or  end  is  applied  to  natural  objects  only  jper 
viam  analogiw.  The  telos  is  a  provisional  concept 
intended  to  cover  the  gap  in  knowledge  due  to  our 
ignorance  of  causes.  It  is  an  index  finger  pointing 
to  the  existence  of  unknown  causes,  a  prod  intended 
to  stimulate  our  search  for  such  causes.  A  true  telos 
does  not  exist  in  nature.  We  are  only  advised,  or, 
if  you  Tvill,  enjoined,  so  to  regard  nature  as  if  it  were 
the  product  of  a  purposeful  inteUigence,  as  if  it 
represented  a  concatenation  of  ends,  in  order  that 
we  may  the  better  succeed  in  unravelhng  the  chain 
of  causes.  A  telos,  strictly  speaking,  exists  only 
in  the  moral  realm.  There  is  only  a  single  exam- 
ple of  it  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge  —  the 
act  which  expresses  absolute  universality  and  ne- 
cessity. Now,  so  far  as  our  fellow- men  are  moral 
beings  they  must  work  out  their  salvation  without 
our  assistance.  A  moral  act  is  an  act  of  pure  spon- 
taneity which  no  one  can  suggest  to  or  elicit  in 


358  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

another.  A  man's  morality  is  wholly  his  own  cre- 
ation. We  cannot  enter  into  another's  soul.  We 
cannot  either  infect  or  purify  his  motives.  The 
degree  of  effort  which  he  makes  to  lift  the  rational 
motive  into  consciousness  and  keep  it  there  consti- 
tutes his  moral  desert.  And  that  effort,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  must  be  his  own.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  we  regard  man  as  part  and  parcel  of 
the  order  of  nature,  we  find  that  the  notion  of  end 
applied  to  him  from  this  point  of  view  is  altogether 
illusory.  Our  desires,  our  volitions,  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  effects  of  causes,  quite  as  much  as 
the  melting  of  wax  under  the  effect  of  heat.  The 
fact  that,  in  ordinary  parlance,  we  use  the  term 
"end"  whenever  the  representation  of  the  outcome 
of  an  act  precedes  the  act  does  not  really  justify  the 
use  of  that  term.  The  process  of  volition  is  not 
really  teleological  if  the  representation  that  pre- 
cedes the  act  is  itself  the  inevitable  consequence  of 
a  string  of  previous  representations.  From  the 
standpoint  of  the  Kantian  "Kritik,"  therefore,  it 
seems  to  me  forbidden  to  speak  of  the  natural 
ends  of  man.  As  a  natural  being,  he  has  no  ends. 
The  notion  of  end  applies  to  natural  objects  only  by 
way  of  analogy.  It  is  intended  to  be  used  as  a 
kind  of  wishing-rod  to  help  us  in  locating  the  spot 
where  we  must  dig  for  the  gold  of  causes.  It  is  only 
a  device  designed  to  facilitate  investigation.  There 
are  no  ends  in  nature.  We  merely  conduct  our  in- 
vestigations "as  if"  there  were  ends.     Now  my 


FELIX  ADLER  359 

criticism  of  Kant  is  that  the  proviso  "as  if,"  which 
he  couples  with  the  notion  of  end  in  the  "Kritik 
of  the  Pure  Reason,"  is  omitted  by  him  when  he 
speaks  of  man  as  a  natural  object  in  the  "  Kjitik  of 
the  Practical  Reason."  And  thus,  without  justi- 
fication, abruptly,  he  confronts  us  with  the  notion 
of  the  natural  ends  of  our  fellow-beings  as  the  basis 
for  a  scheme  of  positive  altruistic  duties. 

I  must  content  myself  with  barely  mentioning, 
in  passing,  that  the  illicit  notion  of  end,  as  applied 
to  man  in  his  natural  character,  is  also  the  un- 
stable foundation  whereon  rests  Kant's  moral 
theology.  A  God  is  needed  in  order  to  harmonize 
the  moral  end  and  the  so-called  natural  ends,  to 
distribute  happiness  in  exact  proportion  to  moral 
desert.  But  if  the  basis  of  natural  ends  goes  to 
pieces,  the  superstructure  of  moral  belief,  which 
has  been  erected  upon  it,  likewise  crumbles,  and 
new  foundations  will  have  to  be  supplied  if  it,  or 
anything  hke  it,  is  to  be  maintained. 

The  nobility,  the  force  and  the  fire  of  the  Kant- 
ian ethics  is  contained  in  the  proposition  that  no 
human  being  may  be  treated  merely  as  the  tool  of 
another,  merely  as  a  means  to  another's  end,  but 
shall  ever  be  regarded  as  an  end  in  himself.  This 
statement,  to  my  mind,  is  the  Alpha  if  not,  as  ortho- 
dox Kantians  have  claimed,  also  the  Omega  of 
morality.  Unfortunately,  I  am  compelled  to  think 
that  in  putting  forth  this  statement  Kant's  ethical 
perception  far  outran  his  ethical  theory,  that  the 


360  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

theoretic  underpinning  which  he  offers  does  not 
really  support  this  great  practical  pronouncement. 
We  hear  much  nowadays  of  the  necessity  of  a  return 
to  Kant.  And  I,  too,  believe  that  a  return  to  Kant 
is  necessary,  at  least  for  those  who  maintain  that 
there  is  an  absolute  element  in  morality,  despite 
the  admitted  relativity  and  changeableness  of  the 
specific  moral  commands.  Yes,  a  return  to  Kant, 
but  in  the  sense  of  taking  up  anew  the  problem 
which  he  attempted,  but  failed,  to  solve ;  in  the  sense 
of  trying  by  a  new  path  to  reach  the  goal  which  he 
had  in  view,  and  which,  it  has  become  evident,  can- 
not be  reached  by  the  path  which  he  pursued.  He 
has  not  justified  the  conception  of  an  end  in  itself, 
as  applied  to  man.  He  could  not  do  so  because  he 
missed  the  organic  idea  from  which  alone  the  con- 
ception of  end  or  purpose  can  be  derived.^ 

*  We  hear  the  crash  of  a  tree  as  it  falls  in  the  primeval  forest.  We  see  the 
snow  disengage  itself  from  the  brink  of  a  precipice  and  tumble  in  powdery 
cascades  into  the  abyss  below.  The  notion  of  purpose  does  not  arise  in  con- 
nection with  such  occurrences.  We  say  "this  thing  has  happened" ;  that  is 
all.  If  we  wish  to  go  further,  we  ask  "  Why  has  this  thing  happened  ?  "  What 
are  the  causes  that  have  produced  this  effect  ?  We  see  an  erratic  boulder  in 
the  midst  of  a  green  field.  We  do  not  ask,  "  What  end  does  it  serve  by  being 
here?"  but  "What  are  the  forces  that  have  brought  it  hither?"  Its  being 
there  is  the  eflfect  of  a  cause  or  causes.  An  effect  is  that  which  happens  because 
something  else  has  previously  happened.  Shall  we  now  define,  by  contrast, 
that  a  means  to  an  end  is  something  which  happens  in  order  that  some- 
thing else  may  happen  thereafter  ?  Kant  takes  this  view  of  the  relation  of 
means  to  ends,  and  hence  infers  that  the  notion  of  an  end  is  essentially  an  an- 
thropomorphic conception  founded  on  the  analogy  of  the  purposeful  action  of 
human  beings.  And  this  view  is  shared  by  the  majority  of  those  who  have 
written  on  the  subject.  Watch-making  and  house-building  are  the  typical 
examples  of  the  adjustment  of  means  to  ends.  The  objects  of  nature,  to  which 
the  teleological  view  applies,  says  Kant,  are  to  be  regarded  as  if  they  were  the 
products  of  an  intelligence  like  that  of  man,  an  intelligence  in  which  the  idea 


FELIX  ADLER  361 

And,  lastly,  the  ethical  system  of  Kant  is  individ- 
uahstic  because  intellectualistic  and  rationalistic. 
What  he  calls  the  rational  nature  is  the  element 

of  the  resulting  whole,  present  in  a  mind  operating  from  the  outside,  precedes 
and  controls  the  arrangement  and  the  speciBcation  of  the  parts.  But  a  more 
thorough-going  inquiry  will  make  it  manifest  that  this  explanation  is,  in 
reahty,  a  case  of  putting  the  cart  before  the  horse,  that,  instead  of  the  or- 
ganic idea  being  an  anthropomorphic  analogy  based  on  the  purposeful  action 
of  man,  the  reverse  is  true,  namely,  that  the  purjjoseful  action  of  man  is  de- 
pendent on,  springs  from  and  derives  its  meaning  from  the  fact  that  he  is  an 
organic  being,  or  at  least  that  he  is  controlled  in  his  conduct  by  the  organic 
idea.  The  organic  idea  takes  precedence.  Our  sep8»^te  purposes  are  sec- 
ondarj'  to  it,  subservnent  to  it,  corollaries  from  it.  Our  simplest  planful  acts, 
—  the  eating  of  food  to  satisfy  hunger,  the  quenching  of  thirst,  the  kindUng  of 
fuel  to  sustain  the  warmth  of  the  Ixxly,  the  erection  of  dwellings  for  the  sake 
of  shelter,  —  all  have  reference  to  the  functions  of  our  body,  i.  e.,  of  a  system 
of  parts  which  are,  at  least  to  some  extent,  organically  related.  These  voli- 
tional acts  of  ours  are  purposeful  because  the  functions  which  they  subserve 
are  purposeful,  that  is,  because  the  functions  subserved  are  members  of  a 
system  of  correlated  functions.  And  of  the  highest  examples  of  hiunan  pur- 
pose in  the  realm  of  science,  of  art,  and  social  conduct  the  same  is  still  more 
palpably  true.  The  reciprocal  dependence  of  intellect,  feeling,  and  will  in  the 
individual,  the  organic  connection  between  each  individual  and  all  others  in 
the  social  union  is  the  background  from  which  all  these  purposes  stand  out, 
the  underlying  reference  which  they  imply.  Thus  the  Kantian  definition 
that  the  idea  of  the  outcome  of  an  act  precedes  the  act  is  not  adecjuate  to  char- 
acterize purpose.  If  it  were,  then  such  idle  doings  as  the  deliberate  pouring 
of  water  through  a  sieve,  or  the  heaping  of  sand  on  the  beach  in  a  vacant  mo- 
ment would  be  properly  termed  purposeful  conduct,  which  they  are  not.  The 
notion  of  purpose  involves  not  only  that  the  idea  of  the  outcome  of  what 
happ)ens  shall  precede  the  happening,  but  that  that  outcome,  whatever  it  be, 
shall  fit  into  a  scheme  of  interdependent  happenings. 

Thus  the  organic  idea,  and  it  alone,  enables  us  to  substantiate  Kant's  fun- 
damental ethical  thought  that  man  shall  be  regarded  not  only  as  a  means  but 
also  as  an  end.  In  an  organic  system  every  means  is  at  the  same  time  an  end. 
Every  jKirt  subserves  the  others,  and  is  served  by  them.  The  whole  not  only 
presides  over  the  arrangement  of  the  parts,  but  is  present  in  each  part.  For 
the  organic  idea  is  nothing  else  than  that  complete  fusion  of  the  idea  of  the 
one  and  the  many,  the  source  of  which  in  the  vcrj-  constitution  of  the  human 
mind  we  have  indicated  above.  The  one  is  in  each  member  of  the  manifold 
because  the  pluraUty  is  but  the  explication  of  the  unity,  and  each  of  the  sepa- 
rate members  is  indissolubly  related  to  every  other  because  every  other  is  as 
necessary  to  that  complete  explication  as  itself. 


362  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

of  unity  separated  from  its  correlative,  and  man,  so 
far  as  he  is  a  rational  being,  is  considered  as  an 
embodiment  of  this  unity,  a  unit  or  atom,  while 
the  rational  commonwealth  is  an  aggregate  of  such 
atoms.  Individualism  was  the  keynote  of  eigh- 
teenth century  speculation,  and  the  individualistic 
tendency  of  the  age  found  its  most  authoritative 
expression  in  the  Kantian  philosophy.  If  addi- 
tional proof,  after  what  has  been  said,  were  re- 
quired, it  would  only  be  necessary  to  cast  a  glance 
at  the  "Tugendlehre,"  or  "The  Doctrine  of  Vir- 
tue," in  which  Kant  outlines  the  scheme  of  prac- 
tical morality  which  springs  from  his  theory.  In 
this  practical  exposition  of  the  chief  duties  of  life, 
we  find  that  the  self- regarding  duties  receive 
minute  attention,  that  the  general  altruistic  duties 
are  also  carefully  considered,  while  the  specific 
duties  of  the  family,  of  the  professions,  of  the 
various  social  classes  toward  each  other,  etc.,  — 
in  brief,  those  duties  which  most  obviously  imply 
an  organic  relation,  a  correlation  of  dissimilars 
rather  than  a  co-ordination  of  similars,  are  either 
scantily  treated  or  wholly  omitted.  The  conju- 
gal duties,  for  instance,  do  not  appear  at  all  in 
this  scheme  of  practical  morality.  The  personal 
duties  are  accentuated.  The  social  duties,  in  the 
strictest  sense,  are  left  out.  And  therefore  the 
Kantian  system  —  and  this  is  perhaps  the  weight- 
iest objection  that  can  be  urged  against  it  at  the 
present  day  —  cannot  adequately  help  us  in  devel- 


FELIX  ADLER  363 

oping  the  social  conscience,  cannot  satisfy  that 
need  which  to-day  is  felt  naore  keenly  than  any 
other,  the  need  of  a  social  ethics,  the  need  of  a 
clearer  statement  of  the  principles  which  shall  de- 
termine social  morality.  In  his  private  life,  too, 
Kant  displayed  his  individuahsm.  He  not  only 
never  married,  but  he  did  not  recognize,  in  a  finer 
sense,  the  ties  of  consanguinity.  He  discharged 
punctually  his  external  obhgations  toward  his  kins- 
men, but  even  his  nearest,  his  brother  and  his 
sister,  he  kept  at  a  distance,  as  his  biographer  tells 
us,  in  the  behef  that  association  should  be  a  matter 
of  free  choice,  and  not  subject  to  the  constraint  of 
natural  bonds.  Friendship,  however,  he  celebrated 
in  terms  almost  as  eulogistic  as  those  of  Aristotle, 
friendship,  the  one  social  tie  which  is  most  congenial 
to  the  spirit  of  individuahsts,  because  it  can  be 
knit  at  pleasure  and  dissolved  at  pleasure. 

These,  then,  are  the  objections  or  the  points  of 
criticism  which  I  have  desired  to  submit. 

In  defining  freedom,  Kant  tries  to  set  off  by 
itself  one  of  a  brace  of  inseparable  correlatives,  to 
cut  with  one  of  a  pair  of  shears. 

In  positing  mere  empty  necessity  and  universal- 
ity as  the  essential  characteristics  of  moral  action, 
he  offers  us  the  ghost  or  echo  of  natural  law  as 
the  motive  of  conduct  and  represents  the  cogency 
which  accompanies  the  synthetic  process  as  if  it 
could  exist  with  the  synthetic  process  left  out. 

His  scheme  of  moraUty,  founded  on  pure  ration- 


364  THE  ETHICS  OF  KANT 

ality,  is  in  the  air  and  has  no  footing  upon  earth. 
There  is  no  one  to  whom  we  can  be  certain  that  we 
owe  moral  duty  because  there  is  no  one  of  whom 
we  are  certain  that  he  is  a  rational  being,  in  the 
Kantian  sense. 

The  moral  rules  cannot  be  deduced  from  the 
Categorical  Imperative,  and  the  deduction  which 
Kant  undertakes  is  based  on  the  false  assumption 
of  an  equality  between  human  beings,  which  does 
not  exist. 

The  conception  of  man  as  an  end  in  himself, 
which  is  the  most  inspiring  of  his  pronouncements, 
is  at  variance  with  the  "  Kritik  of  the  Pure  Reason," 
and  is  not  established  by  the  *'  Kritik  of  the  Practical 
Reason."    It  cannot  be  justified  in  his  system. 

Finally,  his  ethics  is  individualistic  and  cannot 
serve  us  in  our  most  pressing  need  at  the  present 
day.  And  yet,  despite  these  shortcomings,  Kant's 
ethics  has  sounded  through  the  world  with  a  clear, 
clarion  note,  has  had  a  mighty  awakening  influ- 
ence, and  something  like  the  flashes  of  the  light- 
ning that  played  on  Sinai  have  played  about  it.  It 
has  had  this  influence  because  it  emphasizes  the 
fundamental  fact  that  the  moral  law  is  imperative, 
not  subject  to  the  peradventure  of  inclination,  of 
temperament,  of  circumstance  —  an  emphasis  to 
which  every  moral  being,  at  least  in  his  higher 
moments,  responds.  It  has  had  this  influence  be- 
cause of  the  sublimity  of  the  origin  which  he  assigns 
to  the  moral  law,  because  he  translates  it  from  the 


FELIX  ADLER  365 

sphere  of  ephemeral  utihties,  whether  individual- 
istic or  racial,  into  the  region  of  eternal  being, 
comparable  with  nothing  in  the  physical  universe 
except  only  the  starry  firmament.  And  last,  and 
not  least,  because  his  own  lofty  personality  shines 
through  his  wTitten  words.  A  man  may  be  bigger 
than  his  creed,  and,  in  the  same  way,  he  may 
tower  above  his  philosophy.  I  think  it  is  true  to 
say  that  Kant's  personality  produces  this  effect 
upon  his  readers,  that  when  we  study  his  ethical 
writings  we  obtain  the  impression  of  one  who  was 
fallible,  indeed,  and  shared  in  many  ways  the 
limitations  of  his  time,  but  who,  at  the  same  time, 
was  a  man  morally  high-bred,  a  man  in  whom 
a  certain  chastity  of  the  intellect  communicated 
itself  to  every  faculty,  producing  a  purity  of  the 
entire  nature,  incomparable  of  its  kind,  a  man  to 
whom  may  be  applied  the  words  which  Aristotle 
used  of  Plato,  ov  ovh  alpelv  Tolcn  /ca/cotcrt  ^e/xt? 
("whom  the  bad  have  not  even  the  right  to 
praise"). 


THE  ABUSE  OF  ABSTRACTION  IN 
ETHICS 


THE    ABUSE   OF   ABSTRACTION    IN 
ETHICS 

By  Herbert  Gardiner  Lord 

Edward  westermarck  begins  the  first 

chapter  of  his  recent  and  able  treatise  on  "The 
Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas" 
with  a  noticeable  statement.  He  asserts  "that  the 
moral  concepts  are  ultimately  based  on  emotions 
either  of  indignation  or  approval."  And  again  in 
chapter  six,  in  which  he  seeks  to  prove  this  prop- 
osition, and  as  it  seems  to  me  without  success,  he 
affirms  that  "either  indignation  or  approval  must 
be  at  the  bottom  of  every  moral  concept"  (p.  131). 
It  is  the  purpose  of  the  present  paper  to  con- 
sider the  soundness  of  this  doctrine ;  but  more  than 
this,  to  oppose  that  method  of  conceiving  the  moral 
life  of  man,  of  which  this  contention  of  Wester- 
marck is  an  example.  It  seems  to  the  writer  a 
method  quite  wrong  from  its  abstractness,  from  its 
doing  violence  to  the  complexity  of  real  life.  It 
appears  to  be  the  unconscious  and  imperative  tend- 
ency of  many  minds,  and  often  of  a  high  order  of 
excellence,  to  find  a  unity  in  the  rich  manifold- 
ness  of  human  consciousness  by  the  sacrifice  of  the 

24  369 


370         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

concrete  many  to  the  abstract  one.  By  attention 
concentrated  on  one  element,  through  over-em- 
phasis on  one  aspect  to  the  neglect  of  other  aspects, 
just  as  surely  and  just  as  much  there,  one  comes 
to  misconceive  the  reality  of ^  life  and  misinterpret 
it.  This  method  of  abstraction,  the  method  of  all 
science,  properly  used,  is  of  the  highest  worth.  It 
is  an  invaluable  instrument  for  the  handling  of  an 
otherwise  unmanageable  complex  reality.  But  in 
using  it  one  should  be  conscious  of  its  true  char- 
acter: that  it  temporarily  for  convenience  substi- 
tutes aspects  for  totalities,  elements  for  unities, 
abstractions  for  complexities.  It  is  a  method  of 
manipulating  the  real ;  it  does  not  give  us  the  real. 
If  it  is  practically  useful  to  conceive  of  man's  life 
at  any  given  time  as  fundamentally  emotional,  as 
rational,  as  hedonistic,  or  as  voluntaristic,  why,  so 
then  and  there  conceive  it.  But  that  conception  of 
it  is  abstract  from  and  not  the  concrete  whole. 

Now  it  may  be  seriously  questioned  if  most  of  the 
various  solutions  of  the  moral  problem  do  not  have 
this  one  fundamental  error  of  erecting  a  convenient 
abstraction  into  an  adequate  and  complete  repre- 
sentation of  the  essential  nature  of  man's  ethical 
life.  When  we  start  from  this  point  of  view  and 
examine  many  works  on  ethics,  we  discover  a 
certain  confusion  underlying  the  language  of  the 
writers,  or  an  utter  unconsciousness  of  underlying 
presuppositions  that  their  words  and  conceptions 
necessarily  imply. 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD   371 

This  seems  to  be  the  case  with  Westermarck. 
While  we  are  aware  of  what  he  means  to  say,  yet 
when  we  examine  more  closely  what  he  implies 
in  what  he  actually  does  say,  we  find  that  often 
his  implications  come  near  contradicting  his  asser- 
tions. For  example,  he  speaks  of  "the  phenomena 
which  evoke  them"  (the  emotions  of  approval  and 
indignation) ;  and  again,  "  the  moral  concepts 
are  essentially  generalizations  of  tendencies  in 
certain  phenomena  to  call  forth  moral  emotions" 
(pp.  4  and  5).  If  it  be  asked  what  possible  mean- 
ing the  term  "phenomena"  can  have  as  here  used, 
the  reply  must  be  that  it  must  mean  situation.  And 
situation  is  a  term  to  express  an  ideational  con- 
struction. Phenomena  cannot  certainly  mean  the 
bare  sensations,  arising  from  the  stimuh,  as  little 
as  it  can  mean  these  stimuli  themselves.  These 
phenomena  that  evoke,  these  situations  to  which 
come  those  responses  which  are  emotions  of  indig- 
nation and  approval,  are  ideal.  They  are  the 
conditions  sine  qua  non  of  these  responses.  No 
situations  ideally  constructed  of  just  this  sort,  then 
no  emotions  of  just  this  kind  evoked  by  them. 
Why  then  cannot  one  say,  why  indeed  must  not 
one  say :  the  moral  concepts  are  ultimately  based 
on  ideal  constructions  .^  for  every  emotion  presup- 
poses a  judgment.  In  fact,  when  the  concept  named 
by  the  term  emotion  is  analyzed,  and  when  we  ask 
what  we  mean  by  that  word,  we  discover  that 
emotions  as  such  have  no  existence  except  in  and 


372         ABSTRACTION   IN  ETHICS 

through  ideational  construction.  They  have  no 
separate  or  separable  existence  apart  from  ideas. 
As  the  ideal  constructions  change  they  change. 
Emotions  get  their  distinctive  qualities  from  the 
ideas  involved  in  them. 

But  let  it  be  noted  in  passing  that  the  attempt 
is  not  made  here  to  establish  that  the  idea  is  the  true 
ultimate,  that  which  must  be  found  at  the  bottom, 
of  moral  concepts.  It  is  only  pointed  out  that  the 
ideational  has  as  valid  a  claim  to  be  the  true  ulti- 
mate as  has  the  emotional ;  that  the  very  terms  in 
which  the  principle  of  Westermarck  is  stated  imply, 
if  not  the  opposite  of  what  he  contends  for,  a  serious 
limitation  on  the  truth  of  his  doctrine. 

Something  should  be  said  before  going  further 
on  the  bearing  of  the  question  of  the  ultimate  on 
the  problem  of  the  nature  of  morality.  If  by  ulti- 
mate we  mean  the  earliest  discoverable  form,  we 
seem  to  proceed  by  elimination  of  differences  be- 
tween earlier  and  later  forms  till  we  arrive  at  some 
form  which  carries  with  it  none  of  these  differences. 
This  undifferenced  thing  we  call  ultimate.  And 
this  is  clearly  non-moral.  To  say  that  our  moral 
concepts  are  ultimately  based  on  these  early  non- 
moral  impulses,  does  not  help  us  very  much.  It 
helps  us  no  more  than  to  say  our  wisdom  is  based 
on  bare  sensations,  or  even  on  the  energy  in  the 
form  of  the  food  we  push  into  our  mouths  as  Ost- 
wald  would  have  it.  This  is  in  a  sense  true.  As  no 
food,  no  brains ;  no  brains,  no  sensations  ;  no  sen- 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD       373 

sations,  no  wisdom.  But  wisdom  is  not  bread,  and 
mechanical  impulse  is  not  morality,  though  prior 
to  it  and  so  ultimate  in  order  of  time.  As  soon  as 
we  add  a  difference  to  this  ultimate,  we  get  another 
ultimate,  viz.,  this  difference  itself,  and  this  second 
ultimate  is  what  constitutes  morality  as  moral. 
The  nature  of  this  difference  when  it  appears  is 
learned  by  no  search  for  its  prior  form.  It  had 
no  apparent  prior  form.  It  is  a  first  of  its  kind. 
Whence  it  came,  how  it  came,  is  undiscoverable. 
No  formula  of  "tendency  to  variation,"  or  "princi- 
ple of  differentiation,"  does  more  than  with  longer 
and  heavier  words  to  state  the  simple  fact  that  the 
difference  arrives,  no  man  knows  whence  or  how. 

Ultimate,  as  earlier  form,  then,  does  not  help  us 
much.  But  ultimate,  as  essential  and  profounder 
characteristic  difference,  might  help  a  good  deal. 
And  when  we  ask  what  that  difference  is,  we  may 
be  better  able  to  answer  from  later  rather  than 
from  earlier  forms.  The  moral  hero  of  the  twentieth 
century  might  take  us  farther  and  deeper  into  the 
mystery  of  the  essence  of  morality  than  our  re- 
motest arboreal  ancestor  with  his  caudal  append- 
age, even  if  we  could  catch  him  and  dissect  his 
muddled  consciousness.  The  consciousness  of 
the  highly  differentiated,  exquisitely  integrated 
civilized  man  of  to-day  is  the  true  revelation  of  the 
ultimate  nature  of  morality.  In  him  will  be  found 
most  clearly  marked  off  that  peculiar  difference 
which  distinguishes  the  ethical  from  all  else.    And 


374         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

that  increasingly  more  clearly  defined  difference, 
as  it  more  and  more  in  the  past  gave  promise  of  the 
clearer  differentiation  and  more  perfect  integration 
that  has  come,  so  this  better  defined  difference  of 
to-day  may  prophesy  something  better  for  the 
years  to  come.  In  this  case  ultimate  would  be 
something  ahead  rather  than  something  behind. 
And  the  essential  nature  of  morality  will  then 
become  for  us  something  yet  to  be  learned,  as 
certainly  as  it  was  to  our  earliest  philosophic 
ancestors. 

Abandoning  then  the  attempt  to  learn  the  nature 
of  morality  from  its  earlier  forms  as  a  wholly  futile 
endeavor,  we  are  driven  for  whatever  light  we  can 
get  to  the  analysis  of  the  developed  moral  conscious- 
ness of  to-day.  In  what  has  been  said  above,  by 
way  of  introduction,  it  has  been  clearly  indicated 
that  while  our  method  must  necessarily  be  one  of 
analysis,  that  method  has  its  perils.  The  abstrac- 
tion of  a  single  aspect  of  moral  consciousness  must 
not  be  made  identical  with  that  moral  consciousness 
itself. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  ideational  has 
as  valid  a  claim  to  be  the  ultimate  of  moral  con- 
sciousness as  the  emotional.  Something  further 
may  be  urged  on  this  point.  If  we  may  make  use 
of  a  classification  of  Mr.  Rutgers  Marshall,  that  as 
there  are  on  the  one  hand  "instinct-actions,"  so 
on  the  other  there  are  "instinct-feelings,"  ^  we  get  a 

>  "  Instinct  and  Reason,"  p.  86. 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD       375 

happily  conceived  way  of  representing  the  essential 
fact  of  original  psychic  dispositions  or  impulses 
toward  certain  psychic  results.  One  of  these  is 
toward  cognitive  organization,  the  systemization  of 
ideas,  of  percepts,  and  concepts.  This  impulse  is 
as  deeply  founded  in  consciousness  as  any  other.  It 
is  what  is  involved  in  intelligent  learning  by  expe- 
rience. Without  this  original  push  of  consciousness 
toward  systemic  ideal  constructions,  learning  by  ex- 
perience would  not  be  possible.  And  this  impulse 
by  its  very  nature  involves  a  sense  of  relations,  a 
placing  of  a  given  element  here  rather  than  there 
in  the  system.  And  that  gives  us  at  once  a  sense  of 
Tightness  that  is  quite  purely  cognitive,  logical,  or 
rational,  which  in  and  of  itself  evokes  cognitive  or 
logical  approval.  So  we  have  an  intellectual  in- 
tegrity, or  honesty,  that  does  not  seem  to  wait  on 
emotional  approval,  but  depends  almost,  if  not  quite 
altogether,  on  what  is  often  called  a  certain  insight 
of  reason.  Because  of  this  original  impulse  to 
systemization,  or  organization  of  consciousness 
within,  goes  on  the  organization  of  things  and  per- 
sons "Without.  Persons  get  themselves  related  to  one 
another  as  members  of  a  system.  Their  places  and 
functions  are,  as  such  members  of  such  system,  just 
this  and  not  that.  It  becomes  a  matter  of  rational 
insight  to  fix  their  places  and  functions  as  in  the 
case  of  the  relation  of  ideas.  And  this  system 
established  carries  with  it  a  certain  imperative.  It 
is,  from  this  point  of  view,  the  imperative  of  an 


376         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

intellectual  order,  cognitive  rather  than  emotional. 
Things,  actions,  persons,  must  stand  related  just  so 
and  not  otherwise  in  the  insight,  which  is  also  the 
imperative  of  reason. 

This  is  what  we  mean  by  justice  in  its  abstract 
forms.  As  between  oneself  and  another  "  the  image 
of  an  impartial  outsider  who  acts  as  our  judge" 
is  none  other  than  this  rational  insight  into  the 
relation  existing  between  two  who  are  cognitively 
to  each  other  just  this  and  not  anything  else.  It  is 
the  vision  of  the  actual  reciprocity  of  the  two.  From 
this  comes  the  Golden  Rule  in  its  various  forms: 
"Love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,"  "Do  unto  others 
as  ye  would  be  done  by,"  "Put  yourself  in  his 
place."  But,  furthermore,  even  this  simpler  justice 
necessitates  the  power  not  only  to  "  see  yourself  as 
others  see  you,"  but  even  more  adequately,  and  as 
we  say  more  justly,  to  put  yourself  where  you  belong 
in  a  system  of  many,  in  which  you  not  only  count 
for  one  and  no  more  than  one,  but  in  which  you 
count  for  just  that  sort  of  one,  fulfilling  just  that 
sort  of  function,  which  your  place  in  the  ration- 
ally conceived  system  involves  or  necessitates. 
And  this  gives  us  a  form  of  justice  much  more  pro- 
found and  complex  than  that  of  the  Golden  Rule, 
and  requiring  constructive  imagination  and  rational 
insight  of  the  very  highest  order.  And  with  this 
insight  goes  necessarily  an  inevitableness,  an  in- 
exorableness,  and,  as  we  say  metaphorically,  an 
imperativeness,  which  no  amount  of  twisting  and 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD       377 

intellectual  thimble-rigging  can  avoid.  The  logic 
of  the  system  cannot  be  avoided  any  more  than  a 
step  in  a  mathematical  demonstration.  The  system 
constructed  may  be  WTong,  to  be  sure,  but  so  long 
as  it  stands,  its  parts,  elements,  or  members  are 
placed  and  there  is  set  over  each  of  them  the  imper- 
ative of  the  system  in  which  they  are  members. 
And  it  requires  nothing  but  the  rational  insight 
into  the  system  to  give  one  the  sense  of  an  inex- 
orable imperative.  Then  righteousness,  justice,  or 
what  you  will  is  for  anyone,  being  that  element  in 
that  whole,  just  that  member  in  just  that  system, 
to  perform  his  function  wholly  up  to  and  never  in 
excess  of  the  part  assigned.  Thus  does  a  man 
"fulfil  all  righteousness"  as  far  as  he  is  concerned. 

In  the  practical  morals  of  men  this  fundamental 
impulse  is  everywhere  in  evidence.  "Say  what 
we  will,"  says  Mr.  Booker  T.  AVashington,  "there 
is  something  in  human  nature  which  we  cannot 
blot  out,  which  makes  one  man,  in  the  end,  recog- 
nize and  reward  merit  in  another,  regardless  of 
color  or  race."  ^  This  expression  is  typical  of  its 
recognition  semper,  ubique  et  ah  omnibus.  That  is, 
when  a  man  is  seen  rationally  to  be  in  his  place  in 
the  system  and  fulfilling  his  function  therein,  the 
logical  reason  cannot  help  itself.  Race  and  color 
are  to  it  irrelevances. 

I  would  repeat  here  again  my  warning  given 
above.     I  am  not  the  champion  of  an  ultimate 

'  "  Up  from  Slavery,"  p.  235. 


378         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

ideational  as  against  an  ultimate  emotional  basis 
for  morality.  I  am  only  wishing  to  make  clear 
that  there  is  as  much  to  be  said  for  the  intellectual 
as  for  any  other  basis  for  morals.  I  do  not  wish 
to  seem  to  ignore  my  original  thesis,  that  the  fun- 
damental error  in  the  study  of  the  problem  of 
morals  is  abuse  of  the  abstractness  of  the  method 
necessarily  employed. 

It  will  only  be  necessary  to  mention  with  brevity 
that  the  burden  of  the  moral  development  of 
man  has  in  large  measure  rested  on  intelligence. 
Through  criticism  of  moral  concepts  in  face  of 
well-nigh  overpowering  emotional  hostility  has  the 
progress  of  the  race  been  effected.  "  The  vis  agens,^^ 
it  has  been  well  said,  *'in  the  long  process  of  evo- 
lution lies  in  the  intellectual  development  of  the 
human  race."  ^ 

This  part  of  the  discussion  may  be  fitly  closed 
with  a  somewhat  less  abstruse  treatment,  by  the 
use  of  concrete  illustration.  If  we  take  two  ex- 
tremes, the  revengeful  man  wreaking  vengeance 
on  the  one  who  has  wronged  him,  or  the  man  of 
utter  self-sacrifice  destroying  himself  for  some 
fantastic  cause,  we  find  alike  in  both  emotional  ap- 
proval of  an  undoubted  kind  of  their  several  acts. 
It  is  intellectual  darkness  on  the  one  hand,  as 
much  as  passion  or  emotion  on  the  other,  that  ac- 
counts for  the  conduct  of  each.  More  light,  that  is 
better,  more  intelligent,  ideal  construction  would 

*  Dr.  Steinmetz  quoted  in  Westermarck,  p.  25. 


HERBERT   GARDINER  LORD       379 

have  saved  the  vindictive  man  from  what  is  his 
utter  stupidity,  as  it  would  also  have  saved  the 
other  equally  foohsh  creature  from  throwing  his  life 
away  for  some  trivial  end,  some  mere  freak  of 
fancy.  Neither  of  these  acts,  however  emotionally 
approved,  or  passionately  well-meant,  can  ever  be 
accepted  as  righteous,  because  they  can  never  be 
made  to  fit  into  a  rational  scheme,  as  elements  of  a 
system  constructed  in  and  through  the  insight  of 
reason. 

If  again  we  go  down  to  Wall  Street  or  elsewhere 
and  consider  the  prevailing  commercial  ethics  of 
the  day,  we  are  struck  with  what  is  called  the  ab- 
sence of  fair  play.  What  is  called  for  is,  in  the 
phrase  made  popular  by  President  Roosevelt,  "a 
square  deal."  The  concept  so  named,  either  as  fair 
play  or  a  square  deal,  is  really  that  in  which  per- 
ception of  relations  plays  the  main  part.  It  is  an 
intellectual  process;  the  vision  of  reciprocity,  my 
relation  to  him  like  his  relation  to  me.  Exhortation 
becomes  more  than  persuasion,  than  emotional 
excitement  which  it  also  is.  It  becomes  forcing 
upon  the  commercial  community  the  perception  of 
the  relation  of  its  individuals  to  each  other  as 
members  of  an  organism  with  fixed  imperative 
functions  determined  by  the  system.  And  legis- 
lation (slowly  it  may  be)  is  framed  with  reference 
to  that  rational  insight. 

If  last  we  go  from  business  to  sport,  we  get  an  in- 
teresting illustration.     If  the  football  player  can 


380         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

think  of  himself  as  only  a  member  of  his  own 
team,  whose  sole  function  is  to  win  games  for  his 
college,  any  play  that  is  a  winning  play  becomes 
wholly  proper  as  relevant  to  that  end.  But  if  he 
can  be  brought  to  think  of  himself  as  a  member  of 
a  larger  whole,  let  it  be  of  no  more  than  the  college 
world  at  large,  certain  plays  fair  on  the  narrower 
basis  of  his  own  college  team,  become  at  once  unfair 
and  wrong.  Whether  certain  plays  will  excite  his 
emotional  approval  or  indignation  depends  then  on 
how  he  conceives  of  his  team,  whether  of  a  larger 
whole  or  system.  And,  lest  in  the  heat  of  the  con- 
test the  larger  conception  be  driven  out  of  his  mind, 
the  umpire  is  there.  This  umpire  invades  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  excited  player  with  the  more 
comprehensive  ideal  construction  in  accordance 
with  which  certain  plays  have  place  and  certain 
others  are  ruled  out.  Just  so  far  as  the  player  is 
trained  in  ignorance,  or  into  neglect  of  the  larger 
ideal,  he  becomes,  as  is  the  phrase,  no  true  sports- 
man. On  the  other  hand,  just  so  far  as  he  loses 
himself  in  the  mere  passion  for  winning,  plays  be- 
come emotionally  condemned  that  lose  the  game, 
or  emotionally  approved  that  win  it,  and  a  sneaking 
resentment  arises  in  him  against  the  umpire,  which 
will  not  away  till  in  cooler  hours  the  larger  ideal 
system  takes  possession  of  consciousness  and  holds 
sway  by  virtue  of  its  very  own  reasonableness,  and  as 
such  evokes,  —  better,  compels  emotional  approval 
of  itself.     Then  the  umpire's  decision  becomes  the 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD       381 

very  voice  of  that  ideal  system.  Back  of  the  umpire 
stands  this  system,  with  its  imperative,  masterful 
no  more  over  umpire  than  over  player.  He  finds 
himself  held,  as  in  a  vise,  to  a  fixed  right  thing  to 
do  in  that  system  of  which  he  sees  himself  a  part. 

But  there  are  other  elements  that  seem  to  possess 
just  as  solid  a  claim  for  ultimateness  in  moral  judg- 
ments as  either  of  these  two  so  far  considered. 
There  is  the  conative  aspect  of  consciousness  that 
has  a  very  decided  claim.  If  we  seek  origins,  as 
first  forms,  we  find  consciousness  arising  as  an  in- 
strument in  practical  adjustment.  Sensational, 
perceptual,  ideational,  emotional,  indeed  all  modes 
of  consciousness  may  be  regarded  but  as  forms  and 
means  toward  adjustment  of  the  psychophysical 
organism  to  environment.  Fundamental  then 
would  be  the  push,  to  use  a  metaphor  from  phys- 
ics, toward  equilibrium;  Herbert  Spencer's  "ad- 
justment of  inner  relations  to  outer  relations," 
whatever  that  may  mean. 

On  the  inner  side  we  find,  corresponding  to  this 
outer  activity  in  adjustment,  that  there  is,  so  to 
speak,  a  current  in  consciousness.  It  moves,  and 
not  generally  in  no  particular,  or  in  all  directions, 
but  to  one  end,  at  first  gropingly,  at  last  more 
and  more  knowingly  and  definitely  determined. 
This  end  may  be  called  also  adjustment,  provided 
this  metaphor  be  not  taken  too  literally  and  made 
to  walk  on  all  fours.  Or  it  may  be  called  an  inner 
harmony  of  impulses  or  of  the  elements  of  con- 


382         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

sciousness.  According  to  this  conception  all  acts 
of  adjustment  of  the  organism  to  its  environment 
are  not  ends  but  merely  means  to  the  attainment 
of  certain  moments  of  consciousness,  which  are  in 
their  time  and  place  possessed  of  this  harmony. 
And,  since  consciousness  is  essentially  itself  a 
moment,  the  end,  if  the  word  may  be  allowed, 
is  a  succession  of  such  moments,  each  moment  of 
harmony  being  antecedent  to  its  consequent  mo- 
ment of  harmony.  By  this  end  are  all  outward 
acts  and  all  inward  processes  finally  controlled, 
though  more  often  than  not  with  scant  conscious- 
ness of  this  end  and  of  the  means  to  attain  it.  This 
is  a  way  we  may  perhaps  best  represent  to  our- 
selves the  all-embracing  central  interest  of  human 
mind.  And  as  "interest,"  to  quote  Stout,  "is  co- 
nation defining  itself  in  cognition,"  we  have,  as 
the  ultimate  fact  of  consciousness,  a  process,  this 
conation  defining  itself  in  cognition.  This  cona- 
tion at  length  becomes  a  will  set  to  attaining  this 
end,  with  increasing  clearness  defined  in  cognition. 
It  has  a  twofold  character,  it  is  set,  on  the  one  hand, 
to  ever  clearer  definition  of  end  and  means;  on 
the  other,  to  realization  of  this  better  defined  end 
through  these  better  defined  means.  This  form  of 
conation,  this  set  of  consciousness  toward  the  unde- 
fined end  is  "the  will  to  believe."  This  set  toward 
the  realization  of  the  end  so  far  as  defined,  through 
the  relevant  means  thereto  so  far  as  known,  is  the 
will  to  be  right. 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD       383 

Here  seems  to  be  the  very  inmost  sanctuary  of 
the  human  moral  consciousness,  the  veritable  ulti- 
mate basis  of  morality.  And  in  a  sense  it  may 
well  be  conceded,  until  one  reflects  that  he  is  after 
all  looking  at  an  aspect  of  a  complex,  is  abstract- 
ing not  so  much  even  as  a  part  from  a  whole,  nor 
so  much  as  an  element  from  a  compound,  as  he  is 
a  mere  aspect  of  a  concrete  whole.  It  is  as  though 
he  took  the  convexity  of  a  curve  as  the  curve,  ignor- 
ing its  concavity  and  curvature  as  being  each  as 
necessarily  an  essential  aspect  of  it  as  any  other.  If 
consciousness  be  conceived  of  as  conation  defining 
itself  in  cognition,  the  very  form  of  the  conception 
involves  this  definition  of  the  process  in  cognition, 
this  cognitive  aspect,  as  much  as  that  conative  as- 
pect. That  is  to  say,  it  is  not  the  object  of  our  re- 
gard that  is  ultimately  at  bottom  conation;  it  is 
only  our  way  of  looking  at  it  that  makes  it  seem 
so.  If  we  go  round  and  look  from  the  other  side, 
our  curve  is  concave,  our  ultimate  of  consciousness 
is  ideational.  The  concrete  real  is  as  much  one  as 
the  other,  is  both  and  doubtless  more  beside. 

We  may  consider  this  claim  for  the  ultimateness 
of  will  in  moral  consciousness  from  another  point 
of  view.  Events  that  occur  in  the  mechanical 
order,  whether  external  or  internal,  do  not  excite 
the  indignation  or  approval  that  we  call  moral. 
They  excite  regret  if  disastrous,  or  the  feeling  of 
good  fortune  if  in  one's  favor.  Events  which  evoke 
the  emotions  of  indignation  or  approval  have  fol- 


384         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

lowed  upon,  or  have  been  themselves  decisions  (or 
the  absence  of  decisions  where  decisions  should 
have  been.  No  decision  to  go,  when  go  or  stay 
you  must,  is  morally  a  decision  not  to  go).  These 
decisions  felt  first  in  oneself,  subjectively,  and  as 
such  (to  borrow  Clifford's  term)  "ejected"  into 
the  alter,  constitute  among  others  the  most  em- 
phatic of  the  elements  of  personality.  "The 
deepest  sense  of  human  affairs  is  reached  when  we 
consider  them  not  as  appearances,  but  as  decisions," 
is  a  remark  of  Professor  Miinsterberg. 

Now  it  is  events  as  coming  from  decisions  of 
persons  that  give  rise  to  moral  approval  or  the 
contrary.  "  Moral  indignation  is,  in  its  essence,  di- 
rected toward  the  assumed  cause  of  inflicted  pain. "  ^ 
Again  "Moral  self-condemnation  is  a  hostile  atti- 
tude toward  oneself  as  a  cause  of  pain."  ^  The 
cause  is  not  a  thing,  a  mechanism ;  it  is  a  personal 
agent,  oneself  or  another,  whose  act  issues  from 
or  is  a  decision  given  or  omitted  to  be  given.  Ulti- 
mately, then,  it  all  turns,  it  might  easily  be  claimed, 
on  a  question  of  will. 

When  we  approach  the  problem  from  the  side 
of  emotions,  one  might  draw  much  the  same  con- 
clusions. There  is,  for  example,  all  the  difference 
in  the  world  between  regret,  even  the  bitterest, 
for  the  inevitable,  and  remorse,  no  matter  how 
slight,  for  what  might  have  been  otherwise.  And 
that  peculiar  difference  hes  not    so  much  in  the 

^  "  Westermarck,"  Loc.  cit.,  p.  69. 
'  Loc.  cit.,  p.  105. 


HERBERT   GARDINER  LORD       385 

difference  between  the  emotions  of  regret  and 
remorse  as  such,  great  as  that  difference  is.  It 
lies  in  the  cause  that  differences  these  emotions, 
in  the  absence  or  presence  of  some  act  of  will.  That 
act  of  will  might,  indeed,  not  have  altered  the  event, 
but  could  have  changed  the  attitude  of  one's  mind 
toward  the  inevitableness  of  it.  A  man  might  not 
have  been  able  to  save  his  neighbor  from  drown- 
ing, but  he  might  have  wished  to,  even  have 
willed  to.  And  just  in  that  attitude  of  will  lies  the 
difference  between  regret  and  remorse,  lies  the  es- 
sence of  morality,  and  not  in  the  automatic  emo- 
tion following  on  the  mental  attitude.  So  it  may 
seem  clear  that  an  act  of  will,  a  decision,  "  must  be 
at  the  bottom  of  every  moral  concept."  These 
concepts  are  generalizations  based  on  acts  of  will. 

But  if  one  takes  pains  to  consider  the  words 
which  he  is  compelled  to  use  in  expressing  these 
conceptions,  he  discovers  that  there  is  much  im- 
plied that  seriously  qualifies  his  main  contention. 
He  recognizes  that  by  decisions  of  agents  he  means 
complex  ideal  constructions  without  which  that 
bare  abstraction  called  an  act  of  will  could  not 
exist.  He  sees  that  he  has  pretty  much  repudiated 
his  doctrine  of  the  ultimateness  of  will  in  moral 
judgments  in  the  very  act  of  formulating  it. 

Approvals  then  follow  on  decisions,  whether 
these  decisions  become  effective  through  the  pre- 
potence  of  certain  ideal  constructions  over  others, 
or  through  some  more  obscure  processes  of  con- 

25 


386         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

sciousness.  But  what  decisions  ?  decisions  tending 
toward  and  having  reference  to  what  end  ?  The 
answer  to  this  question  brings  into  view  a  concep- 
tion of  the  ultimate  basis  of  morals  that  ever  has 
had,  and  perhaps  always  will  have,  many  adher- 
ents. They  answer  only  those  decisions  that  have 
reference  to  the  attainment  of  happiness  and  ever 
can  be,  in  the  last  analysis,  approved  of  as  right. 
And  in  this  contention  appears  an  element  or  aspect 
of  consciousness  which  must  be  reckoned  with. 
If  we  go  back  to  what  has  previously  been  said 
concerning  adjustment  and  the  inner  harmony 
arising  out  of  it,  we  may  recall  how  all  outer  acts 
of  the  organism  and  all  inner  processes  of  con- 
sciousness are  with  reference  to  the  attainment  of 
a  harmony  through  successive  moments  of  con- 
sciousness. The  persistence  of  this  contention 
throughout  all  the  ages  of  reflection  upon  the  na- 
ture of  the  moral  life  is  presumption  enough  that 
there  is  in  it  something  sohd.  The  most  careful 
and  thorough  analysis  will  inevitably  convince  one 
that  here  is  indeed  an  indubitable  fact  to  reckon 
with,  and  to  build  on.  The  elements  of  emotional 
approval  or  disapproval,  of  ideational  construc- 
tion, of  practical  adjustment,  or  voUtional  deci- 
sion, are  no  more  efficiently  there  than  this  of  the 
hedonic  tone  of  consciousness.  That  moment  of 
consciousness  has  value  which  is  agreeably  toned. 
It  is  useless  to  deny  this.  Consciousness  must  ever 
be  hostile  toward  what  tones  it  disagreeably,  ever 


HERBERT   GARDINER  LORD       387 

favorable  toward  what  tones  it  pleasantly.  No 
more  ultimate  basis  for  morals,  it  seems  to  many, 
can  ever  be  discovered  than  this.  The  ethics  of 
the  New  Testament  Scriptures,  no  less  than  of  Aris- 
totle, are  constructed  with  reference  to  it.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  begins  with  Beatitudes. 
St.  Paul  \\Tites:  "There  remaineth  therefore  no 
condemnation  for  them  that  are  in  Christ  Jesus," 
as  if  the  removal  of  that  disapproval  which  is  the 
sense  of  sin  were  the  soul's  main  hunger.  A  later 
New  Testament  writer  speaks  of  Jesus  as  one 
"who  for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  liim  endured 
the  cross."  And  the  eudsemonia  of  Aristotle  con- 
fesses unimpeachable  presence  of  this  element. 

Yet  it  will  become  evident  to  one  who  more  care- 
fully considers  that,  true  as  this  contention  is,  when 
regarded  from  one  point  of  view,  it  is  yet  false  when 
conceived  too  abstractly.  There  is  to  be  sure  in  all 
approved  moments  of  consciousness  an  agreeable 
tone,  as  in  all  curves  there  are  convexities.  But  as 
convexities  vary  so  do  hedonic  tones.  Hedonic 
tone  is  as  much  an  abstraction,  having  no  more 
existence  apart  from  the  concrete  moments  of 
consciousness  than  any  convexity  has  existence 
apart  from  its  curve.  And  as  curves  vary  and  so  do 
their  convexities,  thus  also  it  is  true  that  as  mo- 
ments of  consciousness  differ  enormously  in  their 
complexity  so  do  their  hedonic  tones  differ  from 
each  other.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  generic 
hedonic  tone   for  consciousness.     There   are   he- 


388         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

donic  tones  for  concrete  moments  of  conscious- 
ness differing  as  one  star  from  another.  As  there 
is  confessedly  to  be  detected  underlying  conscious- 
ness an  hierarchy  of  impulses,  giving  rise  to  what 
may  as  well  be  called  an  hierarchy  of  concepts  or 
cognitions,  and  of  emotions,  so  also  it  may  be  felt 
to  give  rise  to  an  hierarchy  of  hedonic  tones.  It 
is  clear  to  anyone  who  carefully  watches  his  own 
successive  psychoses,  that  the  hedonic  tone  of  any 
one  psychosis  is  not  of  equal  value  with  that  of  some 
other.  He  will  become  aware  that  psychoses  differ 
not  only  in  complexity  of  structure  but  in  quality 
of  hedonic  tone,  and  that  quality  of  hedonic  tone  is 
determined  by  the  character  of  the  psychosis  of 
which  it  is  a  constituent,  that  as  on  the  one  hand  it 
helps  to  give  character  to  that  psychosis,  so  on  the 
other  hand  it  receives  quality  from  it.  Thus  the 
end  of  psychical  movement  is  not  hedonic  tone  as 
such,  but  that  total  complex  psychosis  of  which 
hedonic  tone  is  only  one  of  many  constituent 
elements. 

But,  again,  whether  the  approval  spring  from 
the  agreeable  tone,  as  it  is  so  often  assumed  without 
question,  or  on  the  contrary  the  agreeable  tone 
spring  from  the  approval  is  open  to  serious  ques- 
tion. At  any  rate  this  much  may  be  said.  No 
matter  what  other  elements  in  any  moment  of 
consciousness  may  tend  to  give  it  agreeable  tone, 
if  there  is  not  the  element  of  approval,  there  is  not 
yet  any  deep,  wide,  and  lasting  pleasantness  for 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD       381) 

consciousness.  A  flash  of  light  here,  a  casual  word 
there,  and  it  is  gone. 

"  Just  when  we  are  safest,  there  's  a  sunset-touch; 
A  fancy  from  a  tlower  bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides,  — 
And  that 's  enough  " 

to  bring  the  shock  of  disapproval,  and  with  it  dis- 
agreeable feeling  tone  continues  till  disapproval 
is  removed  or  approval  is  won.  If  there  be  won 
this  approval  other  elements  of  disagreeableness, 
however  great,  can  be  enduretl.  The  massive 
movement  of  the  complex  unified  consciousness 
of  a  Socrates  drinking  hemlock,  of  a  Jesus  dying 
on  the  cross,  whatever  strong  eddies  of  pain  there 
be  in  it,  is  still  toned  agreeably,  as  it  makes  head 
conqueringly  towartl  that  end  which  each  has 
ideally  constructed  as  fit.  And  does  not  that  tone 
rest  on  the  solid  basis  of  approval  whether  cogni- 
tive or  emotional  ? 

In  short  a  hedonistic  ethic  ha^  its  only  possible 
justification  in  an  abstraction  that  does  violence 
to  the  actual  concrete  complexity  of  the  moral  con- 
sciousness of  man.  It  is  true  as  an  aspect  of  a 
unity  is  true.  But  it  is  not  all  that  is  true.  It  is 
not  even  the  unifying  centre  of  all  that  is  true. 

Before  bringing  this  discussion  to  a  close,  it 
seems  proper  to  take  some  more  comprehensive 
view  of  the  matter  than  hixs  so  far  been  definitely 
attemi)ted,  though  all  along  of  course  it  has  been 
impUed.     Perhaps   this  can   be   as   well  done   by 


390         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

using  the  concept  of  situation  of  which  use  was  made 
early  in  this  paper.  It  was  there  observed  that  in 
Westermarck's  expression  "phenomena  that  call 
forth  moral  emotions,"  phenomena  could  mean 
nothing  else  than  situation.  And  it  was  still  further 
observed  that  situation  is  a  name  for  an  ideational 
construction.  I  want  here  at  once  to  reaffirm  that 
statement  and  to  modify  it.  Situation  is  an  idea- 
tional construction,  but  it  is  both  more  and  other 
than  that.  To  understand  what  that  is  to  which  we 
respond,  what  phenomena  are  that  call  forth  emo- 
tions, or  evoke  actions,  there  is  needed  careful 
study  of  the  mode  in  which  situations  are  built  up. 
Bringing  to  bear  on  the  matter  the  hght  of  ge- 
netic psychology,  we  discover  that  the  simple  object, 
if  there  be  any  really  simple  object,  in  its  first 
form  as  mere  stimulus  followed  by  certain  conse- 
quences in  consciousness  of  cognition,  hedonic 
tone,  and  so  forth,  does  not  continue  simple  ob- 
ject. It  becomes  an  increasingly  complex  object 
for  consciousness,  to  which  consciousness  itself 
gives  that  character  to  which  its  responses  are  made. 
And  this  object  is  not  built  up  of  cognitions  only. 
In  it  are  fused  with  cognitions,  conative,  hedonic, 
and  emotional  elements.  Because  of  this  the  ob- 
ject becomes  to  us  in  itself  actually  an  agreeable 
object,  because  the  object  put  out  there  by  con- 
sciousness evokes  agreeable  feehng  tone.  In  the 
same  manner  we  get  painful  situations.  These 
are  not  groups  of  sensations,  or  perceptions,  fol- 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD       391 

lowed  by  certain  consciously  separated  results 
from  certain  clearly  distinct  antecedents.  They 
are  certain  total  mass  objects,  called  situations, 
to  which  we  react.  They  are  highly  complex  con- 
structions, the  elements  of  which  are  not  merely 
cognitive,  but  are  as  well  emotional,  hedonic,  co- 
native.  The  original  simple  object  so  quahfied  by 
this  fusing  becomes  an  altogether  different  object. 
It  becomes,  perhaps,  an  unjust  act  of  oneself  or 
another.  This  unjust  act,  as  a  total  complicated 
situation,  compacted  of  many  elements,  arouses 
indignation,  not  necessarily  or  often  perhaps  be- 
cause of  any  definite  consciousness  of  this,  that, 
or  the  other  element,  but  as  a  total  mass.  To  its 
upbuilding  have  gone  not  primarily  merely  emo- 
tions of  indignation,  but  other  modes  of  conscious- 
ness, actions  of  will  and  body,  cognitions,  whether 
sensations,  perceptions,  or  ideas,  feeling  tones  of 
various  kinds,  massed,  packed  into  what  we  might 
call  figuratively  a  soHd.  And  that  sohd  object,  so 
built  up,  and  present  in  any  moment  of  conscious- 
ness, determines  the  movement  of  consciousness, 
fixes  the  character  of  the  consequent  psychosis. 
Not  any  one  element  by  itself,  for  the  time  pre- 
potent, fixes  that  character.  The  vast  underworld, 
of  submerged  manifold  elements  of  past  varied 
experience,  on  the  bosom  of  which,  borne  up  by 
its  mass,  floats  this  prepotent  element,  gives  to  it 
its  character.  It  is  what  it  is,  and  is  powerful  for 
consequent  movements  of  consciousness  and  ac- 


392         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

tion,  because  of  the  deeps  on  the  surface  of  which 
it  appears  as  shifts  the  focus  of  consciousness  over 
the  wide  field  of  inattention,  which  wide  field  is 
ever  the  most  controlling  part  of  consciousness. 

This  being  so,  it  seems  to  me  quite  absurd  to 
pick  out  any  one  now- and- again  prepotent  element 
of  consciousness,  and  call  it  ultimate ;  or  again  to 
abstract  out  an  undeniable  element  thrown  for  a 
moment  up  out  of  the  deeps  forcefully  upon  the 
attention,  and  say  of  it,  this  is  what  constitutes 
righteousness.  One  may  say  it  is  always  an  ele- 
ment in,  now  prepotent,  and  again  more  or  less 
subconscious,  never  the  one  element  that  consti- 
tutes righteousness.  Happiness  is  there,  adjust- 
ment is  there,  reason  is  there,  emotional  approval 
is  there;  now  this  one  more  apparent  than  that 
one;  but  never  any  one  without  the  others  in  the 
right  life. 

To  be  sure,  because  of  the  limitations  of  human 
faculty,  the  necessity  is  upon  us  to  seize  the  world 
in  its  fragmentary  almost  isolated  elements,  or  to 
think  only  through  over  emphasis  on  certain  as- 
pects. In  the  cart-wheel,  the  hub  may  seem  to  be 
more  fundamental  for  thought  than  spokes,  or 
felloes,  or  tire,  since  we  drive  our  spokes  into  the 
hub,  set  round  and  on  these  the  felloes  and  encircle 
these  again  with  the  tire.  But  really  the  wheel  is 
all  these,  and  without  any  of  them  it  is  not  the 
wheel.  Its  unity  is  not  in  any  one  of  its  parts ;  so 
is  it  with  consciousness,  its  unity  is  not  in,  and 


HERBERT  GARDINER  LORD   393 

cannot  be  adequately  stated  in  terms  of  any  one 
of  its  elements  or  aspects.  We  may  talk  about 
the  keystone  of  the  arch,  but  we  know  that  is  a 
convenient  falsification  of  the  fact,  that  each  stone 
counts  as  much  in  the  whole  as  the  keystone.  So 
we  may  talk  about  adjustment,  or  happiness,  or 
emotion,  as  fundamental  elements  of  righteous- 
ness ;  but  if  we  are  wise,  while  we  so  speak  we  shall 
recollect  that  this  is  but  a  convenient  abstraction 
to  help  our  lame  understandings,  and  that  it  falsi- 
fies the  rich  complexity  of  reality. 

But  if  one  would  wish  some  more  perfect  form 
of  conceiving  this  ethical  life  of  man  than  this  con- 
venient way  of  taking  a  part  for  the  whole,  tempo- 
rarily prepotent  aspects  for  the  unity,  doubtless 
nothing  has  ever  been  discovered  more  wholly 
satisfactory,  though  difficult  through  vagueness, 
than  the  Greek  conception  of  harmony.  Its  very 
vagueness  perhaps  makes  it  more  adequately  rep- 
resentative of  the  complicated  reality  of  what  would 
be  the  wholly  righteous  soul.  There  would  be  in 
it  at  once  the  logical  consistencies  of  rational  sys- 
tems, the  profound  congruities  of  emotional  con- 
cords, the  orderly  behaviors  of  ethical  rectitudes, 
all  organized  into  a  higher  morality  than  that  of 
common  speech  —  a  morality  inclusive  of  all  the 
motions  of  consciousness  and  all  the  acts  of  body. 
It  would  be  a  harmony  in  which  the  contentions 
of  the  artist  against  the  mere  moralist,  of  the  prac- 
tical man  against  the  philosopher,  would  at  last 


394         ABSTRACTION  IN  ETHICS 

be  reconciled.  To  be  sure  this  is  sufficiently  vague. 
But  even  so  it  is  better  descriptive  of  the  facts  than 
the  erection  of  any  abstract  aspect  into  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  manifold  wealth  of  the  concrete 
whole.  We  ought  not,  in  the  interest  of  clearness, 
to  sacrifice  truth. 


purposrt:  consistency,  the  outline 
of  a  classification  of  values 


PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY,  THE  OUTLINE 
OF  A  CLASSIFICATION  OF  VALUES 

By  G.  a.  Tawnet 

V^ONSISTENCY  we  have  elsewhere  defined  as 
the  property  of  reflective  activities  by  virtue  of 
which  they  tend  to  keep  up  and  maintain  them- 
selves. It  is  both  a  passion,  a  form  of  things  in 
the  objective  world,  and  a  mode  of  action.  Its 
original  roots  lie  deep  down  in  the  pre- reflective 
immediate  experience  of  very  young  children  and 
lower  animals,  in  the  capacity  for  pleasant  and 
unpleasant  emotions,  and  in  those  instinctive 
and  impulsive  modes  of  action  which,  without 
the  primitive  individual  being  in  the  least  aware 
of  the  fact,  tend  to  maintain  the  species  of  which 
he  is  a  part.  Sentient  activity  everywhere  displays 
purpose.  It  is  purposeful;  but  in  pre-reflective 
immediate  experience  it  is  so  only  to  the  outside 
scientist  who  looks  on  and  studies  it.  Through 
the  exercise  of  the  sense  organs  and  the  nervous 
system  and  by  carrying  out  their  instincts  and 
impulses,  individuals  and  species  develop  con- 
certed modes  of  co-ordinated  and  co-operative 
conduct   calculated   to   preserve   species   and   im- 

S97 


398         PURPOSIVE   CONSISTENCY 

plying  the  same  or  similar  thoughts,  passions,  and 
psychic  organization  in  all.  They  acquire  an 
acquaintance  with  their  environments  and  with 
their  own  bodily  powers  and  members  which  guides 
and  controls  them  in  the  search  for  food  and 
shelter,  in  carrying  on  offensive  and  defensive 
battle  and  in  other  congenital  and  acquired  modes 
of  conduct.  They  cannot,  however,  be  said  to 
reason.  They  are  only  acquainted  with  things, 
they  do  not  know  about  them.  They  "think 
things"  and  are  unable  to  stand  off  and  judge 
them.  Their  ideas  are  simply  and  straightway 
joined  to  the  muscular  movements  which  they 
initiate.  Pre-reflective  experience  is  not  deliber- 
ate. It  is  not  organized,  as  reflective  experience 
is,  by  a  consciousness  of  relations,  or  by  that  dis- 
tinction between  subject  and  object  which  under- 
lies things  and  their  attributes.  Objectivity  and 
universality  do  not  exist  here  and  questions  of 
validity  do  not  arise.  There  is  consequently  no 
difference  between  facts  and  values  at  this  stage. 
Knowledge,  in  the  logical  sense  of  the  word,  does 
not  exist.  Such  selection  of  ideas  as  takes  place  is 
determined  by  associations  of  pleasantness  and 
unpleasantness  in  the  experiences  of  the  past,  by 
suggestions  received  from  the  activities  of  other 
individuals,  and  by  the  congenital  instincts  and 
impulses  of  species  toward  the  satisfaction  of 
which  the  individual  organism  is  characteristically 
bent. 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  399 

The  unit  of  this  pre- reflective  experience  should 
not  be  conceived  as  the  reflex  arc  of  biology  and 
psychophysics,  a  process  which  begins  with  a 
stimulus  and  ends  with  muscular  movement.  We 
should  conceive  the  simplest  form  and  type  of 
experience,  more  adequately  than  Mr.  Spencer, 
as  an  act  which  returns  upon  and  maintains  itself 
by  renewing  its  own  stimulus.  For  Spencer,  ex- 
perience in  every  sense  of  the  word  is  a  sort  of 
epiphenomenon  of  organic  processes  of  the  form 
defined  by  the  reflex  arc.  We  are  warranted  in 
thinking  of  experience  as  a  spiral  activity  which 
without  interruption  returns  upon  itself  at  higher 
and  higher  levels.  In  pre-reflective  experience  it 
does  so  without  deliberation.  But  there  naturally 
comes  a  time  when  individuals  and  species  become 
aware  of  such  self-maintaining  acts  as  their  own^ 
when  they  experience  experience,  and  the  expe- 
rience of  experience  preserves  the  form  of  the 
more  primitive  and  elementary  activity.  The 
task  of  tracing  out  the  natural  history  of  this 
growth  has  been  undertaken  by  the  sciences  of 
genetic  psychology  and  sociology.  When  this  step 
of  growth  takes  place,  the  original  spiral  process 
of  early  experience  appears  as  a  continuous  mani- 
fold of  most  interesting  properties.  It  breaks 
up  into  arcs  or  segments  each  of  which  shortly 
appears  to  be  a  world.  Corresponding  to  the 
stimulus  there  is  a  world  of  presentations.  The 
individual  and  his  kind  are  aware  of  themselves 


400         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

as  occupying  places  in  an  objective  order  of  things. 
Corresponding  to  the  habitual  movements  and 
motor  processes  of  primitive  experience,  with 
their  forms  of  co-ordinated  and  co-operative  ac- 
tivity, there  arises  a  universal  practical  order  in 
which  the  very  being  of  each  depends  upon  the 
maintenance  of  certain  relations  to  others.  The 
purposefulness  which  lay  hidden,  so  to  speak,  in 
the  capacity  for  pleasantness  and  unpleasantness 
ripens  into  a  sense  of  consistency  and  a  conscious 
demand  that  the  world  of  reflective  experience  be 
maintained.  The  harmony  between  certain  ob- 
jective forms  and  our  habits  of  perception  and 
attention  becomes  an  experience  of  beauty.  The 
contributions  made  by  objects  to  the  satisfaction 
of  instinctive  and  impulsive  needs  give  content 
to  a  world  of  economic  values.  The  uniqueness 
of  reflective  experience  itself  becomes  the  ground 
for  an  order  of  absolute  values.  Each  arc  of  the 
spiral  of  primary  experience  acquires  properties, 
differentiation,  and  organization  from  all  the 
points  of  view  supplied  by  secondary  or  reflective 
experience. 

We  shall  call  the  organization  of  the  world  of 
presentation  its  constitutive  consistency,  because 
this  order  constitutes  it  an  independent  and  self- 
maintaining  universe.  Its  laws  and  categories 
are  in  no  sense  of  the  word  made  by  the  knowledge 
of  them.  They  exist  to  be  discovered.  The  con- 
tinuous manifolds  of  time,  space,  similarity,  and 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  401 

implication  which  obtain  in  the  universe  are  a 
priori  and  universal.  Hence  such  orders  as  are 
represented  by  the  terms  subject  and  object,  thing 
and  attributes,  essential  and  accidental  properties, 
and  hence  also  the  manifold  relations  of  corre- 
spondence which  make  those  substitutions  possible 
in  which  the  life  of  reason  and  science  consists. 

We  shall  call  the  order  and  organization  of  the 
world  as  a  sphere  of  conduct  its  practical  con- 
sistency and  observe  that  this  also  is  universal, 
objective,  and  necessary.  The  prejudices  and 
preferences  of  individuals  make  no  actions  either 
good  or  bad.  Forms  of  conduct  must  be  such 
that  they  may  and  do  enter  into  all  experience 
and  possess  a  moral  quality  in  independence  of 
all  individuals,  or  they  have  no  place  in  the  uni- 
verse of  practical  consistency.  The  organization 
of  such  a  universe,  necessary  as  it  is  to  reflective 
experience,  possesses  an  unconditional  form  which 
is  not  derived  from  the  content  of  experience,  how- 
ever dependent  upon  the  content  of  experience 
for  a  knowledge  of  it  we  may  be. 

Similarlv  we  shall  call  the  ort^anization  of  the 
world  of  needs  and  passions  its  purposive  con- 
sistency, and  observe  that  it  also  possesses  an  un- 
conditional form  imposed  upon  it  a  priori,  so  to 
speak,  by  the  nature  of  reflective  experience.  Just 
as  there  are  various  sorts  of  constitutive  and  prac- 
tical consistency  so  also  there  is  variety  in  pur- 
posive consistency,  the  artistic  and  aesthetic,  the 

£6 


402         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

economic  and  utilitarian,  perfection  and  unique- 
ness in  objects  and  in  reflective  experience  as  a 
whole.  In  the  remainder  of  this  paper  we  propose 
to  make  a  brief  study  of  various  sorts  of  purposive 
consistency. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  these  three  types 
are  aspects  of  every  experience  rather  than  essen- 
tial characters  of  distinct  and  separate  groups  of 
objects.  We  find  the  world  of  presentation  to  be 
systematic  and  ordered,  and  in  knowledge  we 
wish  to  have  clearly  stated  the  exact  conditions 
under  which  each  truth  holds.  Exactness  is  neces- 
sary before  knowledge  can  be  of  any  use  in  the 
control  of  further  experience.  Moreover,  we  need 
an  idea  of  the  object  as  a  whole  before  the  claims 
of  constitutive  consistency  are  satisfied.  In  the 
realm  of  conduct,  the  right,  duty,  and  the  good 
apply  respectively  to  conduct  as  objective  and 
presented,  to  the  moral  agency  of  the  individual 
and  to  the  ends  of  moral  action.  Beauty  is  a 
quality  of  the  same  world  whose  constitutive  order 
is  the  object  of  supreme  interest  to  the  special 
sciences ;  economy  and  utility  quahfy  experience 
practically;  perfection  and  uniqueness  of  individ- 
uality qualify  purposively  the  manifold  of  passion 
itself. 

Let  us  take  for  example  the  activities  involved 
in  some  scientific  experience  such  as  the  writing 
of  history.  They  must  in  the  first  place  be  system- 
atic, accurate,  and  thoroughly  in  keeping  with  the 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  403 

demand  for  constitutive  consistency,  and  before 
they  can  be  said  to  be  thorough-going  and  com- 
plete they  must  comprehend  ultimate  postulates 
and  causal  explanations.  The  entire  picture 
should  rise  out  of  the  background  of  nature  in  such 
a  way  as  to  leave  no  real  questions  in  that  field 
unanswered.  Moreover,  the  investigator  of  his- 
tory is  also  in  some  sense  a  maker  of  history,  and 
it  is  conceivable  that  he  should  be  making  history 
in  some  other  way.  The  needs  of  his  family  or 
those  of  his  country  might  be  such  as  to  make 
the  investigation  of  historic  questions  under  the 
circumstances  morally  or  legally  wrong.  In  any 
case  his  activity  is  either  right  or  wrong,  he  is 
either  fulfilling  or  failing  to  fulfil  his  duty  as  an 
agent,  and  his  conduct  on  the  whole  either  con- 
tributes or  fails  to  contribute  to  the  realization  of 
that  ultimate  good  which  is  a  good  for  all  man- 
kind. Moreover,  his  efforts  will  not  receive  our 
unqualified  approval  unless  they  please  the  aesthetic 
taste,  satisfy  the  claims  of  utility  and  economy, 
and  appear  as  demanded  by  that  uniqueness  of 
purpose  which  is  a  man's  highest  claim  to  worth. 
Thus  some  nine  varieties  of  value  arise  when  the 
original  cycle  of  immediate  experience  becomes 
the  objective  arc  of  another  experience. 

Indeed,  each  of  these  varieties  of  value  has  two 
phases  determined  by  the  degree  of  organization, 
the  adequacy  of  the  technique  of  judgment,  in 
the  particular  field  of  each.     Some  problems  fall 


404         PURPOSIVE   CONSISTENCY 

so  completely  within  the  rubrics  of  a  special  tech- 
nique of  judgment  that  the  solution  can  easily  be 
reached  by  simply  setting  that  technique  in  oper- 
ation. Thus  the  moral  and  legal  institutions  of 
society  may  be  adequate  to  solve  any  given  ques- 
tion of  practical  consistency.  Where  they  do  not 
do  so  we  must  fall  back  upon  some  such  concep- 
tion as  sovereignty  of  moral  order  or  of  the  state 
for  the  solution  of  questions  of  right  and  wrong, 
upon  some  such  conception  as  freedom  or  auton- 
omy for  the  solution  of  questions  of  duty,  and 
upon  some  such  conception  as  a  rational  social 
universe  to  solve  questions  relating  to  the  good. 

Where  such  questions  are  legal  in  nature  they 
involve  the  philosophy  of  law  and  government, 
but  if  they  are  of  such  nature  as  to  fall  clearly 
within  the  moral  sphere,  they  become  religious  in 
character  and  we  appeal  to  an  ideal  infallible 
judgment.  Similarly  in  the  sphere  of  constitutive 
consistency,  when  technique  fails  we  try  to  decide 
questions  of  uniformity  and  order  analytically  by 
the  law  of  identity,  questions  of  exactness  by  some 
such  principle  as  conservation,  and  questions  of 
completeness  and  explanation  by  the  purposive 
principle  of  isolation.  We  proceed  analytically 
and  speculatively  and  our  solutions  are  neces- 
sarily tentative,  serving  as  hypotheses  to  guide  us 
in  the  further  investigation  of  problems.  In  the 
end  the  technique  of  science  may  be  revised  or 
extended   to   meet    the   needs    of   new   problems. 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  405 

Once  more,  in  the  realm  of  purposive  consistency, 
when  the  technique  of  art  fails  to  furnish  adequate 
solutions  of  problems,  when  the  conventional 
models  and  standards  of  criticism  fail,  the  artist 
is  thrown  back  upon  the  original  aesthetic  taste 
of  reflective  experience  and  his  judgment  must  be 
offered  as  an  invasion  for  the  approval  or  disap- 
proval of  his  contemporaries.  In  the  sphere  of 
economics,  the  inventor  has  no  guide  but  the 
general  principle  of  utility.  When  our  problem 
relates  to  the  perfection  or  individuality  of  an  ex- 
perience and  conventional  standards  do  not  apply, 
we  have  nothing  to  guide  us  to  a  decision  except 
the  sense  and  sentiment  of  absolute  uniqueness, 
which  is  perhaps  the  profoundest  craving  of  human 
life. 

Many  attempts  have  been  made  in  the  past  to 
construe  the  principles  of  practical  consistency  as 
constitutive.  Ever  since  the  Stoics  formulated 
their  conception  of  law  as  a  thing  both  natural 
(or  constitutive),  rational,  and  divine,  wTiters 
have  been  inclined  to  say  that  moral  laws  and 
other  principles  of  practical  consistency  are  laws 
of  nature  and  therefore  more  ultimate  and  au- 
thoritative than  laws  of  society.  The  ju^  naturalis 
of  Roman  law  and  of  the  founders  of  modern 
jurisprudence,  the  philosophy  of  right  of  Althusius, 
Grotius,  Ilobbes,  Rousseau,  and  the  American  Dec- 
laration of  Independence,  the  ^\Titings  of  such  men 
as  Emerson  and  Maeterlinck,  the  doctrine  of  the 


406         PURPOSIVE   CONSISTENCY 

equivalence  of  values  and  that  of  the  unlimited 
increase  of  values,  —  these  and  many  more  serve 
to  remind  us  of  the  extent  to  which  principles  of 
practical  consistency  have  been  construed  as  con- 
stitutive principles  of  the  natural  world.  But 
this  tendency  is  without  foundation  in  the  experi- 
ence of  the  race.  It  is  also  unwarranted  by  a 
critical  study  of  the  differences  between  the  prin- 
ciples of  nature  and  those  of  conduct.  The  former 
are  constitutive  while  the  latter  are  demanded. 
The  former  represent  forms  of  existence  without 
which  no  such  thing  as  a  natural  world  can  be  or 
be  conceived.  The  latter  hold  the  same  relation 
to  social  order  that  the  former  hold  to  natural 
order,  but  a  natural  order  is  conceivable  entirely 
apart  from  the  idea  of  a  social  order.  Writers 
sometimes  speak  of  the  principles  of  practical 
consistency  as  spiritual  laws  and  call  them  self- 
executing.  Emerson  frequently  writes  in  this 
vein.  But  the  laws  of  practical  consistency  are 
not  self- executing  in  any  such  sense  as  the  laws  of 
constitutive  consistency.  In  the  case  of  the  latter 
there  is  a  literal  and  physical  carrying  out  of  the 
letter  of  the  law  which  has  no  correspondent  in 
the  sphere  of  duty. 

It  is  just  this  difference  between  these  two  kinds 
of  consistency  which  gives  rise  to  the  moral  argu- 
ment for  the  existence  of  God  in  the  practical 
philosophy  of  Kant,  and  which  has  led  others  to 
conceive  a  sort  of  pseudo- constitutive  moral  order 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  407 

superimposed  upon  nature.  Indeed,  what  is  the 
notion  of  a  divine  government  of  the  world  but  an 
extension  of  the  same  idea  ?  There  is  no  constitu- 
tive principle  which  provides  that  the  practical 
values  of  conduct  shall  be  met  and  equated  in 
life  by  corresponding  degrees  of  happiness,  or 
that  the  possibility  of  growth  in  practical  values 
is  unlimited,  and  yet  there  is  something  in  the 
form  of  reflective  experience  which  demands  that 
such  an  equation  and  such  a  possibihty  shall  be 
real.  Hence  the  existence  of  God  to  bring  it  about, 
hence  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  hence  the 
entire  scheme  of  divine  government  and  the  plan 
of  salvation  which  grows  out  of  it.  Most  people 
who  believe  in  the  creeds  of  Christendom  do  not 
distinguish  between  the  manner  of  the  existence 
of  nature  and  that  of  the  divine  government  of  the 
w^orld,  except  to  say  that  the  latter  is  more  perma- 
nent than  the  former,  and  this  gives  rise  to  a  whole 
series  of  questions  as  to  the  possibility  of  the 
existence  of  souls  without  bodies  and  without  the 
natural  order  of  which  bodies  form  a  part,  ques- 
tions as  to  the  process  of  resurrection  and  the 
character  of  the  punishment  which  in  the  spirit 
world  each  must  undergo  for  the  sins  done  in  the 
body.  The  plain  truth  seems  to  be  that  the 
practical  order  of  values  is  not  constitutive  and  this 
entire  mediaeval  world-drama  necessarily  retains 
something  of  the  character  of  a  philosophical 
poem.     It  is  sometimes  taken  as  a  matter  of  sur- 


408         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

prise  that  the  main  features  of  this  poem  do  not 
admit  of  demonstration  on  the  principles  of  con- 
stitutive consistency. 

It  is  often  held  that  the  deeper  categories  of 
science,  the  organizing  concepts  of  the  world  of 
presentation,  are  all  aesthetic.  Completeness  and 
order  are  certainly  two  of  the  forms  of  constitu- 
tive consistency,  two  of  the  characters  of  the  world, 
and  they  as  certainly  enter  as  normative  principles 
into  aesthetics  and  art.  Exactness  is  not  so  easy  to 
construe  as  an  aesthetic  demand,  and  exactness 
is  the  main  bone  of  contention  between  the  schools 
of  realism  and  idealism  in  modern  art. 

There  is,  however,  a  difference  in  kind  between 
scientific  order  and  completeness  on  the  one  hand 
and  aesthetic  order  and  completeness  on  the  other. 
The  former  are  constitutive,  necessary  to  the  bare 
existence  of  a  world  of  reflective  experience,  while 
the  latter  are,  if  not  gratuitous,  at  least  not  essen- 
tial to  the  concept  of  a  world  of  presentation. 
Moreover,  scientific  order  is  abstract  and  occupies 
the  focus  of  interest,  while  the  order  and  com- 
pleteness of  aesthetic  experience  are  marginal  and 
concrete.  One  might  say  that  the  latter  are 
subliminal.  When  we  fix  our  attention  upon  the 
relations  of  order  and  completeness  in  objects  of 
aesthetic  value,  we  cease  to  be  appreciators  of  beauty 
and  become  scientific  analysts,  philosophers  of 
beauty. 

Scientific  conceptions  undoubtedly  satisfy  a  fun- 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  409 

damental  demand  of  reflective  experience.  We 
are  gratified  by  them.  But  the  satisfaction  is 
different  in  quahty  from  that  of  contemplating 
beautiful  objects.  The  gratification  of  scientific 
conceptions  is  an  assurance  of  ease  in  the  further 
activities  of  experience,  a  confidence  of  facility  in 
carrying  out  further  tasks  of  reflection.  The  grati- 
fication of  aesthetic  contemplation  does  not  point 
beyond  the  present  moment.  It  would  be  complete 
if  there  were  no  future.  It  is  essentially  the  satis- 
faction of  repose.  The  corresponding  uneasinesses 
in  the  presence  of  disordered  manifolds  are  like- 
wise different  from  each  other.  That  of  the 
scientist  calls  for  active  interest  in  the  mani- 
fold itseff.  That  of  the  aesthete  rather  calls  for 
negation  and  exclusion.  The  scientist  proceeds 
to  bury  himself  in  the  manifold  in  order  that 
he  may  find  himself  there  again.  The  aesthete 
proceeds  to  save  himself  by  damning  the  whole 
situation  and  turning  elsewhere  for  consolation. 
To  the  one  we  react  positively.  To  the  other, 
negatively. 

The  methods  of  enjoyment  in  the  two  cases  are 
different.  Scientific  triumphs  are  seen  to  be  such 
only  as  we  look  away  from  and  beyond  particular 
concrete  objects  and  contemplate  a  range  of  ex- 
periences which  could  not  possibly  be  presented. 
Objects  of  aesthetic  appreciation  themselves  ab- 
sorb all  our  eyes  and  concretely  satisfy  our  ideal 
needs.     The  test  of  scientific  values  lies  in  their 


410         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

consistency  with  further  and  further  facts,  while 
the  test  of  aesthetic  values  hes  in  the  direct  enjoy- 
ment of  them.  It  is  like  the  test  of  pudding,  except 
that  this  lies  within  the  capacity  of  the  individual 
while  the  test  of  beauty  involves  the  possible  uni- 
versal enjoyment  of  it.  Scientific  order  remains 
forever  a  triumph.  Each  moment  of  further  ex- 
perience is  an  opportunity  of  applying  our  inter- 
pretations anew  and  anew  realizing  their  worth. 
^Esthetic  value  on  the  other  hand  does  not  end- 
lessly satisfy.  It  grows  trite  and  langweilig  with 
too  great  familiarity. 

We  cannot  look  upon  the  attempt  to  reduce 
the  categories  of  constitutive  consistency  to  aesthetic 
terms  as  anything  but  a  step  toward  confusion. 
It  brings  out  strongly  the  fact  that  some  of  the 
fundamental  categories  of  science  are  purposive, 
but  in  the  interest  of  both  aesthetics  and  epis- 
temology  we  should  like  to  see  the  difference  be- 
tween aesthetic  order  and  scientific  order  more 
generally  recognized.  There  are  certain  purposive 
scientific  formulations  which  hold  places  of  fun- 
damental importance  but  are  nevertheless  neither 
axiomatic  nor  demonstrable.  When  we  ask  for 
their  justification  it  appears  that  they  cannot  be 
deduced  from  anything  more  general  than  they 
are  and  that  they  do  not  admit  of  empirical  proof. 
The  universality  of  causal  relations,  the  dictum 
de  omne  et  nulloy  the  doctrine  ex  nihilo  nihil  fit, 
the    postulates   of    the    different   geometries,    the 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  411 

definitions  of  number,  the  notion  that  nature  is  a 
closed  system  and   the  doctrines  of  conservation 
based  upon  this  notion  when  taken  together  wath 
the  law  of  equivalence,   the  laws  of  motion,   the 
principle  of  cosmic  teleology,  the  physical  concepts 
of  mass,  force,   and   acceleration,   the   notions  of 
continuous   space,    time,    substance,   and   motion, 
the  laws  of  identity  and  sufficient  reason,  —  what 
are  they  all  but  demands  which  the  bare  existence 
of  a  world  of  presentation  makes  upon  our  logic? 
They  are  necessary  to  the  world,  forms  without 
which  there  could  be  no  such  world,  forms  with- 
out which  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  judg- 
ment, but  forms  whose  validity  can  be  established 
neither   by  experiment   nor   by   analysis.     If   we 
seem   to   establish   any   one   by   these   methods  it 
will  always  be  found  either  that   the  verification 
starts  with  and  rests  upon  some  other  one,  which 
is  not  verified,  or  that  it  is  established  in  an  hypo- 
thetical   form    which    show^s    its    essentially    pur- 
posive character.     At  bottom  they  are  forms  of 
continuity  and  order  which  precede  rather  than 
follow^  inference,  postulates,  not  results  of  thought. 
They  are  purposive  elements  of  constitutive  con- 
sistency, demands  for  integrity,  completeness  and 
wholeness  in  the  objects  of  reflective  experience. 
If  in  science  we  abjure  all  such  postulates  and  by 
a  tour  de  force  confine  our  attention  to  matters  of 
exact  description,  after  the  manner  of  the  positiv- 
istic  theory  of  knowledge,  we  leave  the  demand 


412         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

for  integrity  unsatisfied.  Science  becomes  a  thing 
of  shreds  and  patches  and  the  world,  a  mangled 
body  whose  bleeding  stumps  of  legs  and  arms 
cry  out  for  finger-tips  and  toes.  The  order 
and  completeness  of  science  are  akin  to  those  of 
sesthetics,  first  cousins  perhaps,  but  they  are  not 
the  same. 

Similarly  in  the  sphere  of  conduct  and  practical 
consistency,  attempts  are  made  to  regard  the  fun- 
damental categories  of  ethics  and  jurisprudence 
as  aesthetic.  Practical  values  are  sometimes  iden- 
tified with  grace  and  culture.  The  great  names 
of  Goethe  and  Plato  are  connected  with  this  view 
as  well  as  the  lesser  ones  of  Shaftesbury,  Hutche- 
son,  Herbart,  and  others.  They  emphasize  the 
sense  of  fitness  in  man,  the  eternal  fitness  of  things, 
and  the  ontological  character  of  moral  and  natural 
laws.  Immorality  is  worse  than  a  crime,  it  is  in 
bad  taste,  it  is  a  blunder.  This  makes  ethics 
purely  a  science  of  ends  and  a  branch  of  aesthetics, 
as  Herbart  treated  it.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  every  act,  object,  and  institution  in  the  world 
can  be  regarded  from  the  aesthetic  point  of  view, 
but  the  question  is  whether  aesthetic  categories 
are  fundamental  in  ethics  and  jurisprudence, 
whether  the  order  of  practical  consistency  is  essen- 
tially an  aesthetic  order.  That  it  is  not  and  that 
the  two  orders  are  fundamentally  different  seems 
certain  in  the  light  of  the  fact  that  practical  con- 
sistency is  everywhere  demanded  while  aesthetic 


G.  A.  TAW^NEY  413 

order  and  purposive  consistency  in  general  are  not. 
The  forms  of  purposive  consistency  define  limits 
at  which  practical  experience  would  cease.  The 
sentimental  yearning  for  absolutely  complete  and 
perfect  experience  is  like  the  tropism  of  the  moth 
for  the  candle-flame,  a  yearning  for  a  nirvana  of 
unconsciousness  in  which  the  struggle  of  practical 
life  shall  have  ceased.  Struggle,  change,  and  re- 
adjustment belong  to  the  essence  of  practical  ex- 
perience, and  a  world  of  pure  beauty,  of  perfect 
utility  and  economy,  or  of  absolute  individuality 
and  perfection  would  be  a  world  of  nothingness. 
Hence  the  comfort  of  the  exhortation  of  Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra,  "Welcome  each  rebuff  that  turns  earth's 
smoothness  rough,  each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor 
stand,  but  go." 

Imagine  a  society  of  people  of  perfect  culture 
(if  you  can)  mercifully  removed  and  shut  off  from 
the  rest  of  the  world  in  a  place  of  perpetual  music, 
artistic  landscape  pictures,  and  ideal  architecture, 
a  place  where  people  talk  poetry  and  live  in 
rhythms  of  aesthetic  gratification  and  repose,  a 
place  with  no  sins,  no  tobacco,  no  police,  no  strikes, 
no  poverty,  and  no  wars,  a  place  where  men  be- 
come as  children,  taking  no  thought.  Then  in 
accord  with  the  poet's  injunction  to  his  stranded 
crew, 

"  Let  us  swear  an  oath,  and  keep  it  with  an  equal  mind, 
In  the  hollow  lotus  land  to  live  and  lie  reclined 
On  the  hills  like  gods  together,  careless  of  mankind." 


414         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

How  long  would  it  be  before  the  strenuous  life 
would  claim  us  by  its  very  brutality  and  misery? 
How  certainly  would  the  order  of  practical  con- 
sistency disappear  and  life  sink  to  a  dead  monotony 
of  boredom.  Practical  consistency  is  demanded. 
That  of  aesthetics  is  like  a  pure  gift  of  the 
gods.  It  is  merely  enjoyed.  Practical  consist- 
ency is  categorical.  That  of  aesthetics  is  a  mat- 
ter of  taste  and  culture.  Practical  consistency 
is  achieved  by  struggle  and  enjoyed  in  struggle. 
That  of  aesthetics  is  ruined  by  struggle  and  en- 
joyed in  repose.  Practical  goods  are  ends  to  be 
possessed,  ends  which  we  are  bound  to  possess. 
^Esthetic  goods  are  detached  and  their  enjoyment 
does  not  involve  possession.  The  latter  are  such 
that  their  possession  is  often  not  to  be  conceived. 
The  practical  world  is  profoundly  serious.  Its 
atmosphere  is  the  atmospheres  of  the  street,  the 
workshop,  and  the  laboratory,  when  these  are 
tinged  with  reverence.  The  aesthetic  world  on  the 
other  hand  is  a  world  of  semblance  and  make- 
believe.  Its  atmosphere  is  that  of  the  play-house, 
its  attitudes  are  the  attitudes  of  children  at  their 
games. 

The  purposive  category  of  perfection  cannot 
be  made  fundamental  in  ethics  and  jurisprudence 
without  giving  us  a  sentimental  theory  of  prac- 
tical consistency.  No  one  can  live  by  it  without 
growing  "self-centred"  and  missing  that  fine  gra- 
ciousness  of  character  and  beneficent  efficiency  of 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  415 

conduct  which  are  fruits  of  practical  consistency. 
Absolute  perfection  is  incompatible  with  finitude. 
It  is  the  name  of  nothing  which  enters  into  prac- 
tical experience,  of  nothing  which  can  regulate  it. 
It  is  essentially  a  contemplative,  limiting  category. 
Of  course  we  may  define  perfection,  as  Spinoza 
did,  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  a  synonym  for 
activity  and  reality,  but  this  is  not  the  sense  in 
which  the  term  is  usually  used.  In  that  sense  it 
is  a  constitutive,  not  a  purposive,  category.  If 
perfection  be  defined  in  relative  terms,  it  becomes 
identical  either  with  utility  or  with  the  idea  of  a 
rational  social  universe  which  reflection  imposes 
upon  practice  a  priori.  Of  these  two  conceptions, 
a  further  word. 

That  mere  utility  is  not  the  form  of  ethical  and 
jural  ends  has  always  appeared  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  the  sanctions  of  utility  are  conditional 
and  not  categorical.  That,  nevertheless,  the 
goods  of  the  world  of  practical  consistency  are,  in 
some  sense  of  the  word,  at  least  useful,  is  clear  in 
the  light  of  the  fact  that  they  are  always  goods 
for  somebody.  The  weakness  of  the  utilitarian 
ethic  lies  not  so  much  in  its  assertion  that  practical 
goods  are  satisfactions  as  in  its  denial  that  they 
are  anything  more  than  satisfactions.  That  they 
are  a  priori  and  categorical  has  always  been  as- 
serted in  opposition  to  utilitarianism.  Utility 
made  effective  in  experience  by  memory  and 
association  is  undoubtedly  a  principle  of  selection 


416         PURPOSIVE   CONSISTENCY 

and  a  determinant  of  action  in  both  pre-reflective 
and  reflective  experience.  But  when  we  say  the 
capacity  for  pleasant  and  unpleasant  emotions  is 
the  basis  of  ethical  and  jural  theory,  we  logically 
exclude  from  these  disciplines  one  supremely  prac- 
tical obligation,  namely,  the  obligation  to  control 
and  train  our  capacities  for  pleasant  and  un- 
pleasant emotions.  That  some  forms  of  happi- 
ness are  preferable  to  others  has  usually  been 
recognized  by  hedonistic  writers,  but  their  reasons 
for  discriminating  among  pleasures  are  often  not 
in  the  least  hedonistic.  Some  writers  resort  to  an 
intuitional  standard  of  excellence  in  pleasures  and 
thus  combine  intuitionalism  and  utilitarianism. 
It  amounts  to  a  confession  that  utility  is  not  the 
ultimate  category  of  ethics  and  the  sciences  con- 
nected with  it. 

We  should  rather  say  that  the  end  of  reflective 
practice  is  the  maintenance  of  reflective  practice, 
the  maintenance  of  the  multi-polar  self-in-rela- 
tions-to-other-selves of  reflective  experience,  and 
this  end  might  be  called  a  rational  social  universe. 
Certain  ends  are  set  for  us  by  the  institutions  of 
society.  Certain  choices  are  facilitated  by  an 
organized  social  technique  of  practical  judgment, 
and  it  is  only  when  problems  arise  which  do  not 
fall  within  that  technique  that  the  question  of 
the  ultimate  end  of  practical  consistency  becomes 
pressing.  For  example,  the  question,  prior  to 
the  Civil  War,  of  holding  slaves.     Such  questions 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  417 

naturally  become  religious  in  minds  which  take 
them  seriously.  We  consider  the  relations  of  men 
to  each  other  in  an  ideal  City  whose  builder  and 
maker  is  God,  and  pattern  our  attitudes  and 
actions  after  them.  Consider  the  attitudes  of 
certain  members  of  certain  clubs  in  large  cities 
w^here  artificial  standards  of  club  honor  are  ac- 
cepted. Those  members  who  reject  these  stand- 
ards are  looked  upon  as  strangely  pious,  not  to 
say  fanatical,  and  the  idea  is  probably  warranted 
by  the  mental  attitudes  of  the  men  themselves. 
For  they  probably  appeal  to  the  sanctions  of  an 
ideal  social  order  where  club  honor  does  not 
exist. 

We  have  spoken  of  three  kinds  of  pure  pur- 
posive consistency,  and  the  remainder  of  this  paper 
should  treat  of  them.  W^e  have  distinguished 
two  types  of  each  kind  and  must  leave  it  to  our 
discussions  of  the  nature  and  types  of  consistency 
in  another  place  to  justify  the  distinction.  There 
is  beauty,  the  purposive  consistency  of  objects  of 
presentation  which,  when  defined  by  conventional 
models,  we  may  call  art  and,  when  not  so  defined, 
aesthetic  judgment.  There  is  the  purposive  con- 
sistency of  practical  conduct  which,  when  formu- 
lated by  the  institutions  of  society,  we  may  call, 
for  purposes  of  distinction,  economic  and,  when 
not  so  formulated,  utilitarian.  And  there  is  the 
purposive  consistency  of  purpose  itself  which, 
when   organized   and  retrospective,  we   may  call 

27 


418         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

perfection  (using  the  term  in  a  relative  sense) 
and,  when  prospective,  absolute  uniqueness  and 
completeness. 

Beauty  is  an  intrinsic  quality  of  objects  and 
admits  of  definition  as  little  as  the  quality  redness 
does.  The  norms  and  standards  of  aesthetic  judg- 
ment are  consequently  models  or  examples,  not 
principles  or  abstract  formulations.  Conven- 
tional art  criticism  follows  the  models  of  the 
masters.  Great  artists  have  imitators  and  be- 
come the  founders  of  schools.  We  may  analyze 
the  experience  of  beauty  and  discover  in  its  ob- 
jects unity,  symmetry,  proportion,  harmony,  the 
conformity  of  the  object  to  its  type  or  to  its  char- 
acteristic, suggestiveness  due  to  a  wealth  of 
associations,  utility,  analogies  between  mind  and 
the  object,  etc.,  but  beauty  is  more  than  any  or 
all  of  these.  They  may  make  an  object  only 
agreeable,  useful,  or  interesting.  Just  what  the 
physiological  and  psychological  conditions  of  the 
experience  may  be  is  a  matter  still  under  investi- 
gation. Economy  of  the  attention,  the  association 
of  ideas,  and  the  need  of  normal  and  healthy 
exercise  for  the  sense  organs,  muscles,  and  motor 
powers  in  general  are  doubtless  three  principles 
involved  in  it.  The  Kantian  conception  of  a  fell 
purposiveness  or  harmony  between  the  object  and 
the  organization  of  the  self  probably  contains 
much  of  the  truth  in  regard  to  the  matter.  In  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word  beauty  does  not  enter 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  419 

into  pre-reflective  experience,  although  in  the  ex- 
perience of  reflective  beings  it  is  always  imme- 
diate. Education,  custom,  and  habit  undoubtedly 
influence  it,  but  it  is  not  a  product  of  these  alone. 
Beauty  is  categorical.  It  pleases  but  this  is  not 
the  reason  why  it  is  beautiful.  The  beautiful  is 
often  useful,  but  as  often  useless.  It  is  often  the 
outward  expression  of  an  inner  spiritual  quality, 
but  this  is  not  essential.  Historically,  the  objects 
and  activities  which  are  later  to  be  appreciated 
aesthetically  precede  the  appreciation  itself,  and  in 
the  earliest  art  forms  the  influence  of  such  things 
as  sex,  militarism,  religion,  magic,  domestic  econ- 
omy, protection,  and  tribal  custom  is  evident.  The 
appreciation  of  nature  comes  later. 

The  field  of  economics  is  an  enormous  one. 
From  one  point  of  view,  science,  morality,  and 
industrial  organization  are  economic  devices  of 
vast  moment  to  reflective  experience.  They  may 
be  regarded  as  ways  of  reducing  the  manifold 
media  of  life  to  homogeneous  terms,  and  the 
greater  the  homogeneity  of  means  attained  in 
these  various  fields,  the  greater  the  heterogeneity 
of  ends  made  possible  to  practical  experience, 
that  is  to  say,  the  greater  freedom.  Certain  time- 
honored  conflicts  arise  from  this  dual  significance 
of  the  products  of  reflective  activity.  Economic 
purposiveness  involves  the  idea  of  progression 
from  stage  to  stage  in  the  realization  of  ends  while 
the    world    of   constitutive    consistency    does    not 


420         PURPOSIVE  CONSISTENCY 

necessarily  involve  this  idea.  In  evolutionary 
progressions,  from  the  point  of  view  of  science, 
81^83  =  S3  where  S  represents  stage.  But  from 
the  point  of  view  of  practical  purposiveness  we 
cannot  say  this  without  reducing  the  progression 
indicated  by  the  figures  1,  2,  and  3  to  an  illusion. 
Evolution  represents  a  causal  series  of  stages  which 
from  a  constitutive  point  of  view  are  all  equivalent 
and  from  a  purposive  point  of  view  all  different. 
Purposive  consistency  is  volitional  while  con- 
stitutive consistency  is  cognitive.  We  will  for- 
ward but  cognize  backward.  The  purposive  view 
of  things  is  based  upon  and  involves  the  Aristote- 
lean  notion  of  final  causes  or  sufficient  reason, 
and  constitutive  causation  has  sometimes  been 
identified  with  final  causation,  to  the  great  con- 
fusion of  both. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  causation  is  a  volitional 
category  merely.  There  are  reasons  for  rejecting 
this  view.  (1)  Two  events  related  constitutively 
as  cause  and  effect  may  or  may  not  have  the  same 
purposive  significance.  The  accidental  explosion 
of  a  shell  in  the  wrong  camp  illustrates  the  differ- 
ence. The  term  accident  gets  its  meaning  largely 
from  this  disparity  between  constitutive  and  pur- 
posive consistency,  within  the  same  series  of 
events.  The  shell  explodes  according  to  the  same 
constitutive  law  of  causation  whether  it  explodes 
in  the  enemy's  camp  or  in  the  camp  which  fired 
it,  but  it  possesses  two  diametrically  opposite  pur- 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  421 

posive  meanings  in  the  two  cases.  Its  explosion 
in  the  camp  that  fired  it  was  not  intended,  not  pur- 
posed. The  constitutive  or  scientific  view  of  the 
explosion  is  in  this  case  as  in  all  others  satisfying, 
but  from  the  economic  point  of  view  it  is  horribly 
unsatisfying.  (2)  Cause  and  effect  can  be  equated 
scientifically,  but  the  two  stages  of  a  purposive 
system  cannot  be  equated  because  they  represent 
different  degrees  in  the  realization  of  a  common 
end.  (3)  The  constitutive  relation  of  causation  is 
one  of  invariable  sequence,  while  final  causation 
is  invariable  only  within  the  same  system. 

Some  one  may  reply  that  relations  of  invariable 
sequence  and  equivalence  cannot  exist  except  as 
the  terms  related  belong  to  a  single  purposive 
system,  but  this  is  provided  for  in  the  various 
phases  of  constitutive  consistency  itself.  We  have 
already  seen  that  there  are  purposive  elements  in 
constitutive  consistency,  and  these  are  not  voli- 
tional elements,  so  long  as  they  are  constitutive. 
The  disparity  between  the  two  ways  of  viewing 
events  arises  only  when  the  same  event  or  series 
of  events  is  conceived  as  belonging  to  two  differ- 
ent purposive  systems  at  once.  In  the  above 
example  the  explosion  is  part  of  a  battle  and  at 
the  same  time  part  of  the  total  system  of  nature. 
The  purposiveness  involved  in  the  constitutive 
consistency  of  the  explosion  with  its  conditions  is 
the  unity  of  nature  as  a  whole,  while  the  volitional 
purposiveness  of  which  the  explosion  of  the  shell 


422         PURPOSIVE   CONSISTENCY 

in  the  camp  which  fired  it  is  a  violation  of  the  unity 
of  the  battle. 

In  the  economic  order  and  organization  of  ex- 
perience we  may  distinguish  those  cases  in  which 
means  contribute  to  the  realization  of  an  end 
which  lies  outside  of  them,  those  which  realize  an 
end  immanent  in  the  means  themselves,  and  those 
cases  in  which  the  end  is  reflectively  chosen  by  the 
means  themselves.  An  illustration  of  the  first  is 
a  bridge,  a  train  of  cars,  or  a  building.  An  illus- 
tration of  the  second  is  any  organism.  An  illustra- 
tion of  the  third  is  the  family.  In  the  last  case 
the  means  become  their  own  end.  The  order 
and  organization  of  the  state  are  in  a  way  their 
own  end.  Self- maintenance  is  its  highest  law. 
And  so  is  it  in  the  case  of  reflective  experience  as 
a  whole.  The  first  of  these  three  is  the  case  of 
organization  of  the  mechanical  type.  The  second 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  a  group  of  perplexing 
questions  as  to  the  origin  of  life,  its  chemical  basis, 
the  problem  of  vitalism  and  that  of  neo-vitalism 
in  biology.  Is  there  a  purposive  life  force  in  addi- 
tion to  the  mechanical  forces  of  the  physical  and 
chemical  elements  of  the  organism,  and  if  so  how 
is  it  related  to  the  conscious  activities  which  come 
later  in  the  evolution  of  sentiency  ?  How  are  all 
related  to  the  reflective  type  of  purpose  which  we 
have  characterized  as  its  own  end.  We  may  dis- 
tinguish two  types  of  such  purposes,  the  organized 
and  the  reorganizing,  those  purposes  of  finite  indi- 


G.  A.  TAWNEY  423 

victuals  whose  lives  are  so  interrelated  that  to- 
gether they  realize  a  relatively  complete  experience 
for  each  one,  and  that  purpose  of  reflective  expe- 
rience as  a  whole  which  is  our  highest  measure 
of  value,  the  individuality  and  uniqueness  of  the 
universe. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  METHOD  IN  MATHE- 
MATICS AND  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  METHOD  IN  MATH- 
EMATICS AND  PHILOSOPHY 

By  Harold  Chapman  Brown 

1  HE  great  influence  which  the  conception  of  a 
mathematical  method  exercised  upon  philosophers 
in  former  times,  both  as  to  method  of  procedure 
and  valuation  of  results,  and  the  very  slight  regard 
which  is  paid  to  it  in  our  day,  sets  us  the  problem 
of  accounting  for  a  remarkable  discrepancy  in  judg- 
ment. Leibniz,^  in  the  spirit  of  the  founders  of 
modern  philosophy,  believed  that  the  sole  possibility 
of  ending  philosophic  controversies  was  through 
adopting  mathematical  method,  while  Kant,^  even 
as  early  as  1764,  put  forward  the  notion  that  mathe- 
matics and  philosophy  have  nothing  in  common, 
neither  content  nor  method,  and  alleged  grounds 
commonly  accepted  in  our  day. 

Pragmatistic  discussions  are  now  stirring  the 
depths  of  philosophic  methodology,  and  mathe- 
matics is  no  less  perturbed  by  critically  recon- 
structive   researches    of    logisticians,^  viz.,  Peano, 

'  Cf.  "De  Scientia  Universali  seu  Calculo  Philosophico,"  1684. 

*  "Uber  die  Deutlichkeit  der  Grundsatze  der  naturlichen  Theologie  und 
Moral." 

*  Used  as  by  Couturat,  Prin.  d.  Math.,  p.  vi,  but  cf.  G.  Cantor,  Getch.  d. 
Math.,  Bd.  1,  S.  145,  where  it  denotes  arithmetical  calculus  applied  to  sen- 
sible things  as  opposed  to  pure  science  of  number. 

427 


428    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

Russell,  Whitehead,  Couturat,  and  others.  Amid 
the  upheaval  of  both  of  these  sciences  we  venture 
to  reconsider  the  question  of  method,  and  ask  what 
relation  exists  between  the  methods  of  mathematics 
and  of  philosophy,  in  order  to  discover  whether 
the  founders  of  modern  philosophy  were  worship- 
ping false  gods,  or  whether  we  are  neglecting  some- 
thing which  might  be  of  the  utmost  importance  to 
our  researches.  We  may  also  acquire  a  certain 
light  from  this  study  on  the  truth- values  that  may 
be  justly  ascribed  to  diverse  philosophies. 

The  task  is  actually  a  dual  one.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  necessary  to  discover  what  mathematical 
method  really  is,  for  the  vigor  and  proximity  of 
logistical  researches  has  begotten,  in  lack  of  per- 
spective, a  certain  confusion  in  the  minds  of 
mathematicians  themselves;  and  when  the  real 
import  of  mathematical  method  has  been  grasped, 
it  must  be  compared  with  the  method  of  scien- 
tific philosophy,  not  only  with  respect  to  general 
character,  but  also  as  to  perfection  of  develop- 
ment. To  speak  in  anticipation,  the  two  regions 
of  investigation,  mathematics  and  philosophy,  by 
no  means  demand  or  permit  the  diversity  of  method 
which  Kant  thought  called  for,  and  the  clearer 
development  of  the  mathematical  method  can  be 
of  service  in  suggesting  certain  critical  approaches 
to  the  philosopher. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  first  outspoken 
connection  of  philosophy  and  mathematical  method. 


HAROLD   CHAPINIAN   BROWN       429 

made  by  Galenus,^  was  in  connection  with  logic, 
so  that  philosophers  who,  as  their  temperaments 
dictated,  have  been  nauseated  or  amused  by  its 
offspring,  the  card  play  of  Murner,  and  the  mys- 
terious figures  of  Lullus,  should  not  hold  these 
results  as  evidence  of  the  triviality  and  futility  of 
our  problem.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  how- 
ever, when  philosophy  is  characterized  by  Windel- 
band^  as  a  strife  of  methods,  this  charge  seemed 
better  founded.  Descartes  believed  in  mathe- 
matics as  the  universal  science,  and  apparently 
had  a  pretty  correct  idea  of  its  significance,  but 
with  the  Port  Royal  logic,  his  conception  was 
simplified  to  the  traditional  more  geometrico,  which 
is  merely  an  imitation  of  the  form  into  which 
Euclid  cast  geometry ;  in  this  stilted  form  Spinoza 
naively  accepted  it,  and  in  the  field  of  Natural 
Right  it  has  persisted  to  Wolff  in  the  eighteenth 
century.'  If  this  is  mathematical  method,  as  it 
believes  itself  to  be,  we  should  rejoice  that  it  had 
sunk  into  a  state  of  harmless  desuetude,  so  far  as 
philosophy  is  concerned. 

But  it  is  not  so.  It  was  a  misunderstood  and 
perverted  idea  of  the  whole  matter  which  the 
followers  of  Descartes  propagated.  Mathematics 
was  not  yet  in  a  position  in  which  she  could  under- 
stand herself,  much  less  be  understood  by  others, 
and  rationalism,  quick  to  grasp  a  congenial  notion, 

'  Cf.  Prandl,  Gesch.  d.  Log.  im  AbeTidl.,  Bd.  1,  S,  562. 

»  Huit.  of  Phil.,  p.  379. 

»  Cf.  Windelband,  loc.  cit.,  p.  432. 


430    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

seized  upon  the  deductive  process  and  neglected 
to  look  deeper.  We  now  have  a  phrase  "hypo- 
thetico- deductive  system"  which,  when  properly 
understood,  puts  a  new  face  on  the  problem  and 
those  who  have  patience  to  go  on  to  the  end  will 
find  involved  a  union  of  inductive  and  deductive 
procedure  not  widely  different  from  that  demanded 
by  science  in  general.  Leaving  these  things  to  be 
proved  as  we  proceed,  the  first  problem  is,  what  is 
mathematical  method  ? 


Mathematics  is  represented  in  our  day  by  two 
sorts  of  workers,  the  logisticians  whose  successes 
are  primarily  in  the  morphology  of  mathematics, 
a  logical  problem,  and  the  mathematicians  proper 
whose  chief  ends  are  the  solution  of  mathematical 
problems  and  discovery  in  general.  But  because 
of  the  newness  of  logistical  researches,  their  sig- 
nificance seems  to  have  been  much  misunderstood 
both  by  their  expositors  and  by  their  opponents.* 
For  example,  Poincare  ^  claims  that,  while  errors 
are  lamentable  in  any  scientific  work,  they  are 
death  to  the  "new  method,"  for  the  "new  method" 
sets  itself  up  as  infallible.  Deductive  procedure, 
whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  always  has  a  tendency 

'  Cf.  "The  Discussion  between  Poincar^  and  Coutnrat,"  Rev.  d.  Met.  et 
d.  Mar.,  1906,  also  C.  Lucas  de  Peslouan,  Rev.  d.  Phil.,  April,  May,  June, 
1907. 

*  Loc.  cit..  May,  1906,  p.  296. 


HAROLD   CHAPIVIAN  BROW'N       431 

to  claim  infallibility,  and  only  the  deductive  as- 
pect of  logistic  has  been  clearly  recognized  even 
by  logisticians.  This  turns  out  to  be  a  neglect  of 
facts. 

A  similar  error  leads  to  the  reproach  that 
logistic  is  fruitless  in  its  results,  for  it  hampers 
rather  than  aids  creative  mathematical  imagina- 
tion. This  has  been  denied.  Couturat  ^  claims 
that  Leibniz  discovered  infinitesimal  calculus  only 
as  a  sample  of  his  formal  logic.  But  even  if  it  were 
so,  the  function  of  logistic,  if  hmited  to  critical 
reconstruction,  would  be  a  highly  important  one. 
Even  Poincare,^  its  opponent,  distinguishes  two 
types  of  mathematical  mind,  the  "intuitional" 
and  the  "logical,"  both  of  which  are  equally  neces- 
sary to  science,^  although  the  former  are  usually  the 
discoverers,  and  the  latter  the  critical  perfectors 
of  the  more  or  less  imperfect  contributions  of  the 
"intuitionahsts."  Logistic,  then,  is  not  fruitless, 
unless  it  be  taken  as  aiming  at  more  than  it  intends, 
at  more  than  critical  reconstruction.  It  is  the 
problem  of  the  "logical"  type  of  mind. 

The  chief  objection,  however,  from  a  philo- 
sophic point  of  view  is  that  logisticians  define  the 
simple  by  the  complex,*  that  they  neglect  the  clear 
and  undoubtable  for  very  complex  and  badly 
understood    notions    which    they    laboriously   and 

»  Rev.  d.  Met.  et  d.  Mor.,  March,  1906,  p.  21S. 

•  La  Vol.  d.  la  Sci.,  chap.  1. 

•  Loc.  cit.,  p.  15. 

•  Cf.  Lucas  de  Peslouan,  loc.  cit.,  June,  1907. 


432    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

artificially  express  in  an  arbitrary  finite  number 
of  unwieldy  postulates.  This  charge  at  first  seems 
to  be  justified,  but  it  neglects  to  consider  what  is 
the  real  meaning  of  simplicity,  a  very  difficult 
notion,  and  when  we  come  to  consider  it,  in  con- 
nection with  the  logical  problem  of  mathematical 
morphology,  it  will  appear  that  the  logistician  is 
true  to  his  own  purpose  and  does  attain  sim- 
plicity despite  his  apparent  complexity.  It  also 
becomes  evident  that  the  number  of  postulates  is 
a  matter  of  little  moment,  mere  fewness  being  a 
naive  interpretation  of  simplicity  confuted  as  soon 
as  uttered.  Furthermore,  this  problem  of  sim- 
plicity has  decided  bearing  on  certain  philosophic 
opinions  now  under  discussion. 

When  we  ask  how  mathematics  is  at  present 
defined  by  logisticians  we  are  answered  by  Mr. 
Russell's  enthusiastic  statement:  "The  fact  that 
all  mathematics  is  Symbolic  Logic  is  one  of  the 
greatest  discoveries  of  our  age,"  ^  but  as  soon  as 
we  have  begun  to  beheve  this,  Couturat,  whose 
work  on  the  principles  of  mathematics  professes 
to  be  nothing  more  than  a  compte  rendu  of  Mr. 
Russell's,  meets  us  with  the  statement  "that  no 
one  has  ever  pretended  that  all  mathematics  re- 
duces itself  materially  to  logic,  and  that  there  is 
nothing  more  in  a  treatise  of  mathematics  than  in 
a  treatise  of  logic."  ^    We  are  told  that  mathematics 

'  Prin.  of  Math.,  p.  v. 

»  Rev.  d.  Met.  et  d.  Mor.,  March,  1906,  p.  214. 


HAROLD   CHAPMAN  BROWN      433 

is  guided  only  by  the  rules  of  logic  in  making  its 
deductions,  —  as  is  true  of  every  other  science  and 
we  are  left  to  make  out  its  differentia  for  ourselves. 

When  we  ask,  on  the  other  hand,  how  mathe- 
matics proceeds,  we  are  answered  no  less  con- 
tradictorily. Following  Dedekind's  well-known 
saying  that  numbers  are  *'free  creations,"^  we 
learn  that  mathematicians  arbitrarily  formulate 
hypotheses  which  serve  to  create  systems  and  then 
proceed  to  discover  all  that  is  imphed  in  them, 
that  their  task  is  the  creative  development  of  an 
ideal  world.  But  over  against  this  we  have  Poin- 
care,  in  the  spirit  of  Kant,  insisting  that  mathe- 
matical modes  of  development  always  depend 
upon  intuitions.^ 

Logisticians  might  be  expected  to  help  us  out 
of  the  difficulty,  but  the  discrepancy  between 
Russell  and  Couturat  mentioned  above  shows 
that  they  have  not  done  so.  K  we  ask  the  reason 
for  this  the  answer  is  readily  forthcoming.  The 
new  logic  has  had  great  success  in  relating  differ- 
ent branches  of  mathematics;  geometry  and  al- 
gebra are  no  more  to  be  thought  of  as  relatively 
unconnected  sciences,  even  geometry  and  logic 
turn  out  to  be  most  intimate  of  associates,^  and 
in  the  joy  of  morphological  success,  the  method 
bearing  most  closely  on  it  is  taken  as  mathematical 

*  Was  Bind  und  was  soUen  die  Zahlen,  S.  vii. 
>  Rev.  d.  Met.  et  d.  Mar.,  Jan.,  1906,  pp.  17-34. 

'  Cf.  J.  Royce,  "The  Relations  of  the  Principles  of  Logic  to  the  Foun- 
dations of  Geometry,"  Trans,  of  the  Am.  Math.  Soc.,  July,  1905. 

28 


434    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

method,  far  excellence.  We  cannot,  therefore, 
ask  the  logisticians  themselves  to  tell  us  in  what 
mathematical  method  consists.  This  does  not 
mean,  however,  that  we  should  not  go  to  their 
works  to  observe  what  they  do  and  draw  our  own 
conclusions  from  them. 

Pick  up  a  study  at  random.^  There  are  others 
which  would  do  as  well.  It  begins:  "The  well- 
known  algebra,  which  forms  one  of  the  main 
branches  of  elementary  mathematics,  is  a  body 
of  propositions  expressible  in  terms  of  five  funda- 
mental concepts  and  deducible  from  a  small  num- 
ber of  fundamental  propositions  or  hypotheses. 

"The  object  of  the  present  paper  is  to  analyze 
these  fundamental  propositions,  as  far  as  may  be, 
into  their  simplest  component  statements,  and  to 
present  a  hst  which  shall  not  only  be  free  from 
redundancies,  and  suflScient  to  determine  algebra 
uniquely,  but  shall  also  bring  out  clearly  the  rela- 
tive importance  of  the  several  fundamental  concepts 
in  the  structure  of  that  algebra.'* 

In  the  opening  hues  is  the  first  blow  to  those 
who,  in  the  usual  fashion,  interpret  "  hypo  the  ti  co- 
deductive"  systems  as  "free  creations."  We  start 
with  a  "well-known  algebra,"  an  object  presum- 
ably as  definite  as  that  of  any  science,  about  which 
we  are  to  formulate  hypotheses.  We  are  told 
that   certain  fundamental   concepts,  met  with   in 

*  "A  Set  of  Posttilates  for  Ordinary  Complex  Algebra,"  E.  V.  Hunting- 
don.   Trans,  of  the  Am.  Math.  Soc.,  Vol.  6,  No.  2,  April,  1905,  pp.  209-224. 


HAROLD   CHAPMAN  BROWN       435 

its  analysis,  can  be  subjected  to  such  conditions 
that  the  whole  algebra  can  be  constructed,  or  more 
accurately  "reconstructed,"  from  them.  This 
does  not  look  like  "free  creation."  In  fact,  if  we 
wish  to  make  sure  where  the  "ordinary  algebra" 
came  from,  we  turn  to  the  history  of  mathematics 
and  find  it  developed  from  number  problems  which 
in  turn  arise  in  close  connection  with  observation 
of  experience.  Geometry,  especially  in  Egypt, 
and  in  Greece  before  Euchd,  remained  crassly 
empirical  and  could  make  hardly  any  claim  at 
all  to  the  title  of  "deductive  science." 

The  logician  will  reply  quite  rightly,  that  it  is 
not  the  historically  empirical  origin  which  is  of 
importance,  but  that  if  postulates  might  have 
been  arbitrarily  selected  from  which  mathematics 
can  be  developed,  the  system  is  logically  a  free 
creation;  it  is  not  the  fact  that  certain  experience 
suggested  mathematics  to  us  that  is  of  consequence, 
but  the  question  of  logical  status,  and  if  postu- 
lates, chosen  haphazard,  can  ever  be  the  basis  of 
a  system  developed  without  reference  to  experience, 
the  claim  is  made  good  and  we  have  that  anomaly, 
a  purely  deductive  science.  The  opposition  of 
rationahsm  and  empiricism  is  not  here  in  question, 
for  whether  the  source  of  "principles"  is  the  mind 
or  objective  facts,  they  are  only  manifest  when 
reason  is  dealing  with  experience,  and  therefore 
the  question  of  origin  has  no  pragmatic  bearing 
on  the  present  problem. 


436    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

Logistic  has  reduced  the  facts  from  which  mathe- 
matics must  start  to  the  very  primary  ones  of  order, 
or  even  of  contradictories.^  But  the  first  problem 
of  a  tentative  system  is  to  establish  itself  as  free 
from  contradiction.  Thus  the  "well-known"  al- 
gebra can  be  restated  in  terms  of  primarily  ordinal 
concepts,  but  it  is  not  recognized  as  mathematics 
until  shown  to  be  self-consistent.  From  this  de- 
mand arises  a  check  to  the  supposition  that  postu- 
lates might  be  hit  upon,  such  that  a  system  could 
be  developed  from  them  as  a  free  creation. 

Proved  consistency  and  existence  are  usually 
understood  as  the  same  thing  in  mathematics  and 
when  one  studies  the  method  of  proof,  the  reason 
is  evident.  The  only  known  method  for  proving 
the  consistency  of  a  set  of  postulates  is  to  exhibit 
something  with  reference  to  which  they  are  all 
satisfied  together.  The  consistency  is  thus  made 
contingent  upon  the  consistency  of  a  known  exist- 
ing thing,  or  it  may  be,  of  course,  a  known  set  of 
existing  relations  as  in  the  case  of  mathematics. 
But  if  this  is  necessary,  how  could  a  "free  crea- 
tion'' establish  itself  as  consistent  and  existent? 
If  an  entity  is  discovered  which  satisfies  it  and 
consistency  proved,  it  might  as  well,  or  even  better, 
be  looked  upon  logically  as  derived  from  the  study 
of  that  entity  rather  than  from  a  chance  happen- 
ing upon  provably  consistent  postulates.  If  some 
other  way  of  proving  consistency  could  be  discov- 

*  Cf.  J.  Eoyce,  loc.  cit.,  supra. 


HAROLD   CHAPMAN  BROWN       437 

ered  the  case  might  be  altered  but,  as  yet,  the  only 
other  suggestion  is  to  draw  all  possible  conclusions 
from  the  premises  and  show  them  by  individual 
comparison  to  be  consistent,  and  in  the  case  of 
postulates  permitting  an  infinite  number  of  deduc- 
tions, such  as  those  of  mathematics,  this  is  im- 
possible. So  "free  creation"  suffers  a  complete 
check,  and  mathematics  begins  to  appear  hke  any 
natural  science  which  formulates  hypotheses  about 
entities,  and  tries  to  interpret  them  through  con- 
cepts such  that  from  certain  hypotheses  concern- 
ing these  concepts  all  the  phenomena  intended  can 
be  deductively  reconstructed.  Mathematics  has 
achieved  greater  success  in  this  than  other  sciences, 
because  of  the  comparative  simplicity  and  great 
prevalence  of  the  facts  from  which  it  starts. 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  one  region  of  mathematical 
investigation  where  consistency  and  existence  are 
unproved,  namely,  certain  theories  in  relation  to 
the  transfinite,  but  these  regions  are  the  home  of 
such  staring  paradoxes  that  mathematicians  are 
not  to  be  wondered  at  for  feeling  that  somehow 
inconsistencies  have  crept  into  their  definitions 
and  that  perhaps  this  branch  of  investigation  is 
wholly  illegitimate.^  To  show  the  full  conse- 
quences of  this  would  be  an  interesting  philosophic 
task,  but  it  concerns  us  here  only  to  mention  the 
one   possible   exception    to    the   interpretation   of 

*  Russell,  "On  some  Difficulties  in  Theory  of  Transfinite  Numbers  and 
Order  of  Types,"  Proc.  Land.  Math.  Soc.,  Ser.  2,  Vol.  4,  pp.  29-53. 


438    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

mathematical  method  which  makes  mathematics, 
like  any  other  science,  an  hypothesis  concerning 
entities  of  which  we  have  knowledge  of  acquaint- 
ance, and  to  show  that  this  part  of  mathematics 
has  only  a  precarious  claim  to  consideration. 

Having  established  the  consistency  through 
showing  the  existence  of  his  system,  the  logis- 
tician  is  then  led  to  consider  certain  traditional 
requirements  of  a  good  definition.  In  the  first 
place  he  must  show  the  uniqueness  of  it,^  i.  e.,  any 
systems  which  may  be  taken  as  defined  by  the 
postulates  can  be  put  in  one  —  one  correspondence 
with  one  another.  This  is  a  complex  form  of  the 
demand  for  non-ambiguity  in  the  definition  of  a 
concept  and  is  the  common  logical  demand  in 
all  science.  Similarly,  the  "well-known  algebra," 
taken  in  the  consistency  proof,  can  guarantee  that 
the  definition  is  neither  too  wide  nor  too  narrow ;  the 
independence  proof,  that  the  postulates  are  every 
one  necessary,  is  a  further  demand  of  elegance  which 
under  the  name  of  redundancy  is  familiar  to  logi- 
cians. Mathematicians,  then,  thus  far  are  merely 
reinterpreters  of  their  world  by  defined  concepts, 
much  like  other  scientists. 

A  criterion  of  simplicity,  however,  appears  in  a 
fashion  to  give  us  interesting  light  on  the  very 
vague  notion  which  this  term  usually  denotes. 
Couturat  ^  speaks  as  if  it  meant  mere  fewness  of 

'  Cf.  Huntington,  loc.  cit.,  supra. 

«  Rev.  d.  Met.  et  d.  Mar.,  March,  1906,  p.  211. 


HAROLD   CHAPMAN  BROWN       439 

postulates.  But  anyone  not  sufficiently  convinced 
by  his  own  "natural  light"  of  the  futility  of  this, 
considering  the  difficulty  of  saying  when  postu- 
lates are  in  their  simplest  form,  need  only  to 
turn  to  the  literature  of  the  subject  to  find  the 
greatest  variety.  To  cite  a  few  illustrations  from 
Dr.  Huntington :  real  algebra  is  defined  by  sets  of 
from  ten  to  twenty  postulates,^  positive  numbers 
by  four  and  by  six  postulates,^  and  the  algebra 
of  logic  by  sets  of  six,  ten,  and  nine  postulates,' 
of  which  last  it  is  probable  that  most  logicians 
would  select  the  set  of  ten  as  simplest  because  it 
makes  use  of  the  subsumptive  concept  which  the 
others  define  through  equality  and  addition.  It 
seems  indisputable  that  no  rational  criterion  of 
simplicity  can  be  based  on  the  number  of  postu- 
lates involved. 

A  criterion  of  simplicity  which  readily  suggests 
itself  is  harmony  with  previous  knowledge  and 
stock  of  ideas.  If  accepted,  it  leads  to  the  criti- 
cism of  logistic  mentioned  above;  namely,  that 
the  clear  is  derived  from  the  obscure,  for  clarity 
and  obscurity  largely  depend  upon  the  stock  of 
notions  in  the  mind  to  which  the  new  knowledge 
comes.  But  such  a  criterion  can  never  be  of  value 
to  science  because  it  can  never  be  formulated  for  a 
specific  instance  in  such  fashion  that  all  men  can 
accept  its  verdict.     The  discussion  between  Cou- 

»  Trans.  Am.  Math.  Soc.,  Vol.  6,  No.  1,  pp.  17-41. 

*  Id.,  Vol.  3,  No.  i,  pp.  264-284. 

»  Id.,  Vol.  5,  No.  3,  pp.  288-309,  July,  1904. 


440    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

turat  and  Poincare,  to  which  reference  has  been 
made,  is  partly  instigated  by  this  motive  and  so 
far  remains  fruitless.  We  need,  then,  for  science, 
some  more  objective  criterion. 

One  which  readily  suggests  itself  to  mathema- 
ticians is  that  of  relative  freedom  from  immediate 
sense  data.  This  criterion  is,  on  the  surface,  one 
which  leads  mathematicians  of  Peano's  type  to 
prefer  an  entirely  new  statement  of  geometry  to 
Euclid's,  even  if  Euclid's  were  corrected  and  in 
proper  form.  It  is  in  conformity  with  the  familiar 
principle  of  thought  economy  and  is  certainly  one 
of  the  factors  which  may  enter  into  a  judgment 
of  simplicity.  This  is  especially  true  in  a  science 
such  as  geometry  or  mechanics  where  sense  data 
play  an  evident  role,  thus  the  claim  of  Herz  over 
Mach  is  not  that  his  mechanics  is  more  correct, 
but  that  it  is  more  simple.  We  have  not  as  yet, 
however,  an  objectively  valid  test  which  can  be 
universally  applied,  for  If  we  consider  such  sys- 
tems as  the  algebra  of  logic,  mentioned  above,  or 
any  other  of  those  examples,  we  are  marooned. 
We  must  either  consider  all  expositions  equally 
simple,  or  we  must,  to  logically  justify  a  choice, 
seek  some  criterion  of  simplicity  not  yet  disclosed. 

And  there  remains  a  fourth  choice  which  seems 
to  solve  the  problem  more  satisfactorily  than  any 
of  the  others.  It  is  natural  to  call  a  concept  or  a 
thing  simple,  when  it  fits  easily  into  its  place  and 
no  special  effort  is  required  to  make  the  use  of  it 


HAROLD  CHAPMAN  BROWN       441 

which  is  intended.  This  is  making  the  concept 
depend  upon  "purpose,"  but  it  is  objective  in  so 
far  as  the  purpose  can  be  determined,  with  re- 
spect to  which  a  given  concept  is  defined.  Apply- 
ing this  to  the  mathematics  of  the  logisticians  the 
criticisms  disappear.  The  purpose  is  primarily 
morphological  and  therefore  a  system  of  mathe- 
matics is  considered  to  be  in  its  simplest  form 
when  expressed  in  such  fashion  that  its  relation 
to  other  systems  is  clear.  The  aim  is  "to  bring 
out  clearly  the  relative  importance  of  the  several 
fundamental  concepts  in  the  structure  of  the  sys- 
tem"^ and  to  make  the  system  easily  relatable 
to  others.  But  also  the  point  of  view  of  the  critics 
of  logistic  is  clear.  Most  of  them,  like  Poincare, 
are  developers  of  mathematics,  "practical"  mathe- 
maticians they  might  be  called  as  over  against 
the  "contemplative."  They  want  primarily  to 
solve  problems  of  mathematics  and,  therefore,  for 
them  there  is  no  need  of  beginning  geometry  ear- 
lier than  with  such  concepts  as  Euchd  uses.  The 
geometry  of  Peano  is  for  them  as  cumbersome  as 
Euclid  is  to  those  trying  to  solve  the  morphological 
problem,  but  to  these  latter  its  concepts  possess  a 
delightful  simphcity.  What  is  to  be  kept  in  mind 
is  that  both  problems,  that  of  the  "practical"  and 
that  of  the  "contemplative"  mathematicians  are 
legitimate,  and  while  the  most  comprehensive 
demand  should  construct  a  system  satisfactory  to 

'  Cf.  Huntington,  cii.,  rupra. 


442    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

both,  subjective  feelings  of  attraction  or  repulsion 
should  not  pervert  the  sense  of  their  equal  right  to 
consideration. 

In  brief,  then,  the  method  of  mathematics,  as 
it  is  completed  by  the  logisticians,  consists  in  the 
formulation  of  a  set  of  hypotheses  which  are  true 
together  of  some  known  entity,  and  in  subjecting 
these  hypotheses  to  such  tests  as  logicians  impose 
on  tentative  definitions  of  concepts;  that  they  are 
consistent,  neither  too  broad  nor  too  narrow,  and 
simple  in  a  definable  sense.  The  fact  which  seems 
to  have  been  neglected  by  mathematicians  is  that 
the  proof  of  consistency,  by  demanding  an  exhibi- 
tion of  something  already  known,  puts  a  check 
on  the  "free  creation"  theory  of  mathematical 
systems  and  places  them  logically  on  a  level  with 
the  concepts  of  other  sciences  which  all  aim  at 
hypothetico- deductive  procedure.  The  chief  dif- 
ference of  mathematics  seems  to  be  that  because 
of  the  importance  and  frequent  occurrence  of  the 
comparatively  simple  facts  which  are  suflScient  to 
suggest  its  concepts,  a  degree  of  success  has  been 
obtained  of  which  other  sciences  can  as  yet  only 
dream. 

It  is,  therefore,  clear  why  the  philosophers  of 
olden  time  were  carried  away  by  the  example  of 
mathematics.  A  science  which  could  do  so  much 
for  herself  must  be  possessed  of  a  surprising 
method.  And  so  they  undertook  to  follow  in  her 
footsteps,  only  to  meet  with  failure,  but  not  be- 


HAROLD  CHAPMAN  BROWN   443 

cause  of  a  defect  in  her  method,  but  because,  not 
yet  understanding  herself,  she  could  not  be  under- 
stood by  them,  but  presented  to  them  an  illusory 
appearance  of  purely  deductive  progress  with  the 
outward  character  of  which  they  were  impressed, 
and  the  real  nature  of  which  escaped  them.  A 
merely  deductive  mathematics  would  be  of  as 
httle  value  as  a  "freely  created"  philosophy.  The 
old  more  geometrico  threw  away  a  vital  part  of 
the  necessary  and  natural  scientific  procedure 
and  so  it  failed  of  its  purpose.  When  it  was  dead 
it  was  not  hard  to  see  why  the  problem  was  not 
again  forced  upon  philosophers;  in  their  own 
fashion  and  from  their  own  point  of  view  they 
have  been  becoming  scientific,  and  have  outgrown 
the  interest  by  independently  adopting  the  essence 
of  scientific  method.  In  his  paper  on  Avenarius,^ 
Dr.  Bush  speaks  of  the  demand  for  the  existential 
predicate  as  the  feature  which  still  serves  to  dis- 
tinguish metaphysics  from  science;  but  if  one 
pauses  to  consider  the  significance  of  the  existen- 
tial predicate,  it  seems  to  be  reducible  to  an 
hypothesis  as  to  the  legitimate  extent  to  which  the 
other  hypothesis  of  metaphysics  applies.  All 
science  must  turn  upon  some  existence,  and  a 
science  ^  as  well  as  a  metaphysics  —  and  there  can 
be  such  —  which  turns  to  a  merely  imagined  world, 

'  "  Avenarius  and  the  Standpoint  of  Pure  Experience,"  Arch,  of  Phil.,  Psy, 
and  Sci.  Meth.,  No.  2,  Nov..  1905,  p.  3. 

*  Cf.  "Whitehead  on  Mathematical  Concepts  of  the  Material  World," 
Phil.  Trans,  of  the  Royal  Soc.  of  Lond.,  Ser.  A.,  Vol.  205,  pp.  465-525. 


444    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

is  a  dream- play,  of  value  only  as  play  is  of  value 
in  the  training  of  powers  to  be  turned  to  more 
serious  tasks.  But  if  there  is  only  a  difference  in 
range  of  applicability  of  hypotheses  to  distinguish 
metaphysics  from  the  sciences,  all  formal  barriers 
vanish,  —  an  excellent  thing  if  recognized  by 
metaphysicians. 

Though  independently  discovering  the  essentials 
of  method,  philosophy  has  still  something  to  gain 
from  the  study  of  mathematical  procedure ;  for,  by 
virtue  of  its  symbolism,  mathematics  can  express 
itself  with  a  certain  clarity  unattainable  by  other 
sciences.  An  attempt  at  precise  imitation  of  this 
was  one  of  the  stumbling-blocks  in  Leibniz'  path, 
but  an  approximation  of  the  form  has  been  used 
most  successfully  by  Mr.  Russell  in  his  critical 
study  of  Leibniz.  A  very  fruitful  thing  should  be 
to  point  out  in  a  precise  fashion  the  bearing  of 
scientific  method  on  the  prevalent  faults  of  philo- 
sophic systems,  and  certain  possible  meanings  it 
has  for  different  systems,  for  while  philosophers 
are  touching  upon  all  these  things,  they  do  not 
seem  to  have  grasped  them  in  their  full  signifi- 
cance. A  consideration  of  such  points  as  bear 
on  philosophic  criticism  follows. 


HAROLD  CHAPMAN  BROWN       445 


n 

A  metaphysics  constructed  on  the  lines  of  scien- 
tific method  becomes  a  new  and  distinctly  differ- 
ent sort  of  thing  from  the  metaphysics  of  former 
times,  as  is  evinced  by  the  different  flavor  of  the 
disputes  of  scientists  from  those  of  philosophers, 
but  if  scientific  method  is  actually  apphcable  to 
philosophy,  it  should  define  more  systematic 
analyses  and  criticisms  than  have  existed  hitherto. 
The  nature  of  philosophic  categories  is  such  that 
the  best  we  can  hope  for  is  an  approximation,  but 
this  is  not  to  be  despised  in  our  present  state.  It  is 
intended  here  to  observe  what  some  of  these  lines 
of  criticism  would  be.  It  is  not  a  question  of  the 
first  formulation  of  philosophic  data,  which  must 
be  gotten  from  the  study  of  experience,  but  of  the 
critical  reconstruction  of  such  data  into  a  system 
which  can  fairly  be  called  a  philosophy,  and  which 
can  support  a  claim  to  scientific  consideration  of 
its  pretensions. 

The  notion  that  philosophy  is  an  hypothesis  is 
not  a  new  one,  but  it  is  rarely  taken  in  the  frank 
sense  that  a  scientific  attitude  demands.  Ribot 
says  ^  that  metaphysics  "is  an  hypothesis  built 
on  hypotheses,"  and  continues,  "but  the  hypoth- 
esis, which  in  science  is  always  provisional  and 
revocable,  is  here  the  supreme  reality,  the  fixed 

*  "Essay  on  the  Creative  Imagination,"  p.  252. 


446    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

position,  the  inconcussum  quid*'!  This  is,  how- 
ever, just  what  no  philosophic  hypothesis  can 
rightly  claim  to  be.  Rather,  inasmuch  as  in 
science,  hypotheses  are  frequently  open  to  labo- 
ratory tests,  while  in  philosophy  they  are  not, 
philosophic  hypotheses  should  only  timidly  claim 
ephemeral  consideration,  while  those  of  science 
which  have  frequently  undergone  the  tests  of  ex- 
perimentation and  prediction  have  something  of 
the  inconcussum  about  them.  A  somewhat  con- 
fusing circumstance  in  philosophy,  which  renders 
unclear  the  nature  of  certain  philosophic  hypothe- 
ses, is  the  curious  way  which  some  of  them  have  of 
voting  for  themselves  to  insure  their  own  validity, 
a  trait  which  is  familiar  through  its  exposition  in 
Professor  James's  "Will  to  Believe."  No  other 
scientific  hypotheses  have  this  character.  Over 
against  the  truth  that  temperaments  mould  the 
philosophy  of  men,  lies  the  counter  truth  that  a 
philosophy,  which  conforms  nearly  enough  to  a 
temperament  to  be  entered  upon,  has  a  certain 
rigidity  whereby  the  temperament  is  warped  to  fit 
the  misfit  parts  of  it,  as  the  foot  shapes  itself  some- 
what under  the  stiffness  of  a  new  shoe,  until  there 
is  a  verification  of  it  which  it  has  itself  produced. 
Were  it  not  so  philosophy  would  be  an  inefficient 
factor  in  life. 

The  pragmatists  have  recognized  more  clearly 
than  others  the  hypothetical  character  of  philoso- 
phy, but  the  critical  tone  of  their  writings  shows 


HAROLD   CHAPiVIAN  BROWTSF       447 

that  they  do  not  reahze  its  consequences  to  com- 
pared systems.  In  the  first  place,  it  may  be  im- 
possible to  decide  between  rival  hypotheses  which 
is  the  truer,  and,  in  fact,  it  is  quite  possible  that  two 
systems  should  exist  such  that  no  absolute  crite- 
rion of  choice  is  possible.  This  case  has  been  dis- 
missed with  the  statement  that  two  such  systems 
are  identical,  but  tliis  is  too  simple  an  answer  to 
the  problem.  It  is  possible  that  persistent  and 
widely  divergent  "Weltanschauungen"  such  as 
"realism'*  and  "ideahsm,"  "relativism"  and  "ab- 
solutism," maintain  themselves  through  the  fact 
that,  although  distinct  hypotheses,  each,  if  prop- 
erly formulated,  is  able  to  deal  adequately  wuth 
the  facts  of  life;  it  does  not  follow  that  by  some 
hocus-pocus  they  reduce  to  the  same  thing.  When 
the  criterion  of  simplicity  is  interpreted  for  philos- 
ophy, it  will  suggest  that  the  divergence  may  be 
due  to  different  purposes  from  which  philosophers 
set  forth,  and  that  the  different  views  may  be  the 
legitimate  outcome  of  these.  The  problem  of  find- 
ing an  all-comprehending  purpose,  and  its  philos- 
ophy, if  possible,  remains  as  yet  unsolved. 

Philosophers,  for  the  most  part,  intend  their 
systems  to  be  self- consistent,  although  attempts 
to  demonstrate  consistency  are  conspicuous  by 
their  absence.  Many  ^  do  not  attain  it,  even  such 
men  as  Kant,  Fichte,  Schelling,  Leibniz,  and  many 
others,  and  it  is  not  inconsistency  in  details  but 

'   Cf.  Miss  Calkins,  "The  Persistent  Problems  of  Philosophy,"  p.  10. 


448    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

in  the  main  principles,  the  leading  ideas  of  the 
work,  that  is  here  meant.  When  this  charge  can 
be  brought  against  the  foundation  of  a  system 
and  not  merely  against  the  details  of  working  it 
out,  it  is  important,  because  no  inconsistent  phi- 
losophy can  fulfil  its  function  in  a  science. 

Since  "free  philosophic'*  notions  are  not  in 
vogue  the  philosopher  must  hmit  himself  to  the 
well-known  world  of  human  experience.  Ration- 
alists, however,  are  wont  to  be  too  enamoured 
with  principles  to  consider  whether  the  world 
developed  from  them  is  or  is  not  the  world  of 
human  life,  and  empiricists  too  often  fail  to  get 
philosophy  beyond  the  stage  in  which  it  collects 
and  describes  facts,  or  at  most  the  tentatively 
hypothetical  stage  of  science,  and  so  do  not  attain 
the  hypothetico- deductive  stage  which  is  its  final 
aim.  The  empiricist,  who  is  at  the  same  time 
critically  reconstructive,  or  the  rationalist,  who  is 
interested  in  empirical  applications  of  his  hypothe- 
ses, is  the  best  type  of  philosopher,  and  as  long  as 
either  is  thorough,  differences  in  the  practical  out- 
come due  to  these  aspects  of  their  point  of  view 
can  be  reduced  to  a  negligible  minimum. 

After  the  consideration  of  consistency,  the  prob- 
lem for  a  philosophy  is  to  give  an  adequate 
account  of  facts,  but  an  account  which  excludes 
facts  the  admission  of  which  would  not  be  cor- 
rect. In  both  of  these  respects,  adequacy  and 
selectiveness,  many  philosophers  are  found  want- 


HAROLD   CHAPMAN   BRO\A^       449 

ing.  Cases  of  the  former  defect  have  often  been 
more  or  less  clearly  noticed.  For  example,  when 
philosophers  start  from  the  consideration  of  a 
narrow  region  of  fact,  such  as  Kant's  right-  and 
left-handed  glove,  facts  of  religious  life,  or  of  natu- 
ral science,  a  system  is  likely  to  arise  adequate  to 
the  region  in  which  it  has  its  origin  but  inade- 
quate to  other  regions  to  which  it  must  apply  to 
attain  philosophic  universality.  Kant  is  extremely 
successful  when  he  is  considered  merely  as  an  in- 
terpreter of  the  problem  of  space,  time,  and 
mathematics,  but  when  it  comes  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  moral  and  aesthetic  facts  an  addition  of 
assumptions  is  needed  which  not  only  refuses  to 
fuse  with  the  natural  philosophy  but  also  works 
it  into  unclearness  and  leaves  the  system  as  a 
whole  deficient.  Similar  cases  can  readily  be  called 
to  mind  where  moral  life  forms  the  starting  point 
and  the  philosophy  of  nature  is  the  sufferer. 

The  second  of  the  above  mentioned  defects, 
that  of  setting  forth  a  philosophy  admitting  more 
things  than  is  really  desired,  is  less  clearly  recog- 
nized but  is  probably  quite  as  prevalent  as  the 
other.  Hamlet's  remark  may  now"  be  reversed ; 
there  are  more  things  in  some  philosophies  than 
are  dreamt  of  in  heaven  or  hell.  Perhaps  this 
defect  may  be  traced  in  the  difficulties  of  Abso- 
lute Idealism  in  dealing  with  the  problem  of  evil, 
for  in  the  assertion  that  the  absolute  becomes 
more  perfect  through   the  evil  it  transcends,  we 

29 


450    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

seem  to  find  implied  that  it  is  the  function  of  evil 
to  contribute  to  the  perfection  of  the  absolute,  to 
perfect  it  as  an  overcomer,  and  that  therefore  evil 
should  be  cherished  as  carefully  as  good.  Look- 
ing toward  the  absolute  we  can  say  "dark  and 
light  are  both  alike  to  Thee"  and  praise  those  will- 
ing to  be  damned  for  the  glory  of  God.  Of  course, 
this  is  an  interpretation  which  no  absolutist  would 
accept,  and  yet  it  is  hard  to  show  just  what  limi- 
tations have  been  put  on  the  theory  to  exclude  this 
interpretation.  This,  then,  is  one  of  the  cases 
where  the  problem  of  hmiting  a  system  to  the  facts 
which  it  desires  to  include  seem  to  be  pertinent. 
The  insidiousness  of  this  type  of  error  is  so  much 
the  greater,  because  of  the  wide  inclusiveness  which 
philosophy,  as  a  scientific  hypothesis,  must  have, 
and  also  philosophers  can  often  comparatively 
easily  confine  attention  to  the  development  they 
have  made  explicit,  and  divert  it  from  what  is  also 
implied,  but  left  implicit. 

Let  us  suppose  now  that  a  philosophy  has  been 
formulated  without  any  serious  technical  imper- 
fections of  the  types  mentioned  above.  Have  we 
any  reason  for  thinking  there  can  be  only  one  such 
philosophy,  or  that  if  there  are  several  different 
philosophies,  they  reduce  to  an  identity  ?  The 
name  "instrumental  theory  of  knowledge'*  sug- 
gests an  analogy ;  one  can  open  an  oyster  with 
a  rolling-pin,  although  a  knife  would  do  much 
better,  and  we  can  spht  kindhng  with  a  hatchet 


HAROLD   CHAPiVIAN   BROWN       451 

or  an  axe.  In  general,  there  are  several  different 
sorts  of  instruments  with  which  any  operation 
can  be  performed.  Identities  exist  only  with 
respect  to  purpose,  but  even  if  an  invariant  philo- 
sophic purpose  could  be  defined,  there  might  be 
genuinely  different  instruments  for  accomplishing 
this  purpose.  If  the  purpose  were  rigid  for  all 
time,  it  is  true  those  differences  would  not  be 
worth  considering,  but  when,  as  is  actually  the 
case,  the  purpose  with  respect  to  which  the  iden- 
tities are  judged  is  a  constantly  fluctuating  one, 
and  sure  to  be  modified  by  any  marked  scientific 
advance,  these  differences  are  of  importance,  and 
there  appear  to  be  no  persistent  pragmatic  iden- 
tities. When  I  purpose  merely  to  start  the  fire,  the 
hatchet  or  the  axe  are  identical  as  wood  splitters, 
but  when  I  add  consideration  of  ease,  haste,  or 
of  the  quality  of  the  wood,  the  neglected  differences 
assert  themselves.  Thus  of  several  philosophies, 
unless  they  ask  meaningless  questions,  there  may 
be  a  choice  based  not  on  the  possibility  of  one  or 
the  other  fulfilling  the  function  assigned  to  it,  but 
in  the  ease  with  which  it  fulfils  the  function.  This 
is  a  factor  in  the  decision  which  leads  a  man  to 
one  or  another  of  the  great  world  views,  for  no 
mere  sentiment  of  temperamental  "affinity"  would 
keep  alive  a  non-workable  philosophy. 

The  choice  between  instruments  for  a  given 
task  is  based  on  convenience,  that  between  cor- 
rect scientific  theories  is  based  on  simplicity,  which, 


452    MATHEMATICS  AND   PHILOSOPHY 

perhaps,  means  the  same  thing.  Inasmuch  as  prag- 
matism has  opened  the  way  for  relative  truths, 
systems  may  be  selected  for  serviceableness  with 
respect  to  two  characteristics  of  truth,  (1)  those 
that  contain  the  least  untruth,  (2)  those  the  un- 
truths in  which  are  least  involved  in  the  par- 
ticular application  desired.  The  latter  sort  are 
now  in  question  and  this  is  why  slight  differences 
of  purpose  make  themselves  felt. 

In  mathematics  it  was  found  that  simplicity 
also  related  itself  to  purpose,  and  that  while  at- 
tainment of  freedom  from  sense  data  was  some- 
times a  factor,  the  more  general  purpose  split  itself 
into  a  desire  to  discover  morphological  phenomena 
and  a  desire  to  discover  new  theorems  and  sys- 
tems, these  two  points  of  view  being  represented 
by  Peano  and  Poincare  respectively.  As  the  for- 
mer of  these  attitudes  was  called  "contemplative" 
and  the  latter  "  practical,"  inasmuch  as  they  asso- 
ciated themselves  with  two  distinct  types  of  minds, 
a  similar  division  is  to  be  expected  amongst  philos- 
ophers, but,  as  in  the  case  of  mathematics,  both 
types  are  essential  to  science,  and  the  problems 
of  neither  should  be  called  illegitimate. 

An  ideal  philosophy,  or  an  ideal  science,  should 
satisfy  both  motives,  but  as  that  could  not  happen 
without  all  problems  being  solved,  it  is  not  to  be 
looked  for,  even  if  it  is  to  be  thought  desirable. 
A  philosophy  may  then,  as  scientifically  correct, 
be  true,  and  satisfy  one  of  these  types  of  mind 


HAROLD   CHAPMAN   BROWN       453 

more  readily  than  the  other,  and  so  be  felt  as 
simpler  by  certain  philosophers.  It  would  be 
unfruitful  criticism,  however,  for  its  advocates 
to  deny  the  other  type  of  workers'  legitimacy  of 
effort,  even  if  their  work  inspired  in  the  critics 
little  warmth  of  interest  or  sympathy.  Of  course 
each  type  must  offer  a  solution  of  all  philosophic 
problems,  but  it  is  to  be  expected  that  each  will 
have  a  somewhat  awkward  tool  when  tested  by 
works  other  than  that  for  which  it  was  directly 
intended. 

Let  us  take,  for  example,  the  distinction  recently 
made  by  Professor  James  between  the  tough  and 
the  tender  minded,  a  distinction  which  certainly 
exists  as  a  factor  in  the  differentiation  of  individ- 
ual temperaments,  though  it  is  not  as  satisfactory 
a  differentiator  of  philosophies  as  our  criterion 
of  simplicity.  The  Absolute  Idealists  between 
whom  and  Professor  James  the  distinction  is  made 
to  apply,  may  often  assert  with  vigor  the  justi- 
fication by  their  philosophy  of  freedom,  moral  re- 
sponsibility, and  love  of  adventure.  Whether  or 
not  they  are  conceded  to  show  that  their  systems 
actually  do  justify  these  things,  it  remains  true 
that  as  temperamentalists  some,  at  least,  desire 
them.  Let  us  see  how  the  distinction  between  the 
"practical"  and  the  "speculative"  enables  us  to 
interpret  the  difference. 

Professor  James,  like  Poincare,  is  primarily 
interested   in   the   workings   of   philosophy   in  its 


454    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

immediate  application  to  the  problems  of  life, 
while  Professor  Royce,  as  the  type  of  the  Abso- 
lute Ideahst,  is  primarily  interested  in  the  con- 
templation of  the  world  as  embodied  in  philosophy, 
in  the  faith  that  if  philosophy  is  correctly  developed 
the  solution  of  practical  problems  must  follow. 
Take  the  result  depicted  in  each  solution  of  the 
problem  of  evil.  The  former  sees  that  from  the 
data  at  hand  in  our  daily  experience  no  man  can 
speak  authoritatively  as  to  the  upshot  of  the 
world,  whether  good  or  evil  will  finally  triumph. 
Consequently,  he  declines  to  consider  the  problem 
further  and,  being  healthy  minded,  assumes  the 
possibility  of  the  victory  of  the  good  and,  with 
trust  in  his  fellow-man  to  vote  on  the  right  side, 
plunges  into  the  fray.  The  possibihty  of  evil 
triumphing,  while  nominally  admitted,  does  not 
impress  one  as  being  actually  felt. 

For  the  absolutist  the  question  takes  a  different 
form.  We  are  not  now  trying  to  do  something 
with  philosophy,  but  we  are  contemplating  the 
picture  of  the  world  which  it  presents  to  us. 
The  whole  time  span,  to  use  Professor  Royce's 
term,  is  held  before  us  with  all  its  manifold  events 
in  a  single  instant.  Is  the  picture  good  or  bad? 
To  a  healthy  minded  man,  like  Professor  Royce, 
there  is  no  genuine  question.  To  contemplate  the 
picture  as  evil  would  be  the  same  as  for  Pro- 
fessor James  to  insist  upon  failure.  The  advan- 
tage here   is   on  the  practical  philosopher's  side. 


HAROLD   CHAPMAN  BROWN       455 

for  he  can  refuse  to  answer  this  speculative  ques- 
tion, which  demands  an  answer  from  the  "con- 
templatist."  The  answer  once  placed,  it  becomes 
the  problem  for  the  philosophy  of  an  absolutist 
to  justify  the  adventurous  and  striving  character 
of  daily  hfe,  which  he, no  less  than  the  "practical" 
philosopher,  feels.  The  contemplative  motive  in 
itself  is  irreproachable.  There  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  not  ask  for  world  view  to  satisfy  con- 
templation, although  the  solution  of  certain  prob- 
lems may  then  be  harder  to  give  than  when  the 
question  is  otherwise  put. 

In  the  above  illustration  the  advantage  of  sim- 
phcity  seemed  to  be  with  the  practical  motive, 
but  it  is  not  so  with  all  problems  nor  with  all  as- 
pects of  the  problem  of  evil,  if  we  admit  Professor 
James's  statements  as  to  "moral  holiday,"  in 
which  the  absolutist  is  justified  and  which  he 
must  just  take !  With  certain  other  problems 
this  change  of  advantage  may  be  more  striking. 
This  fact  should  lead  to  that  understanding  of 
different  philosophic  exigencies  and  problems 
which,  though  not  inspiring  tolerance  for  imper- 
fect or  defective  solutions  of  problems,  justifies 
the  demand  for  a  solution  on  the  same  grounds 
unless  the  grounds  as  well  as  the  solution  can 
be  shown  defective.  Too  often  we  have  criticisms 
of  the  solution  of  problems,  merely  on  the  ground 
that  they  can  be  solved  more  easily  from  some 
other  standpoint,  without  asking  whether  an  an- 


456     MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

swer  could  rightly  be  demanded  from  the  same 
grounds  as  before;  but  to  continually  change 
from  one  notion  to  another,  or  from  one  set  of 
fundamental  hypotheses  to  another,  is  death  to 
progress;  a  difference  in  fundamental  hypotheses 
is  not  necessarily  a  difference  of  value^  with  re- 
spect to  solutions  of  philosophic  problems. 

As  with  the  two  sorts  of  mathematics,  it  is  the 
contemplative  alone  which  can  present  a  system 
in  ideal  form,  but  it  is  the  other  which  can  best 
collect  and  arrange  the  materials  for  the  system. 
There  should  be,  as  in  history  there  is,  an  alter- 
nation of  these  two  types  of  philosophy,  periods 
of  discovery  and  partial  assimilation  of  facts,  and 
periods  of  critical  reconstruction  in  which  these 
facts  are  weeded  out  and  worked  over  into  good 
scientific  form.  The  comini^  to  light  of  new  facts 
always  disrupts  a  period  of  the  latter  sort  and 
quiescence  of  discovery,  or  the  arrival  at  a  satura- 
tion point,  always  reinstates  it  again. 

If  philosophy  is  to  be  taken  as  a  science,  the 
question  arises  as  to  its  place  amongst  the  other 
sciences  from  the  point  of  view  of  perfection  of 
development.  It  is  quite  common  to  assert  that 
the  aim  of  all  science  is  to  be  mathematical,  and 
it  is  consequently  implied  that  mechanics  and 
physics  are  on  this  account  especially  advanced 
amongst  the  sciences.  This  view  seems  to  be  a 
confusion ;  to  be  mathematical  in  method,  and 
to  apply  mathematics  to  problems  are  two  entirely 


HAROLD   CHAPMxVN   BROWN       457 

different  things.  The  former  turns  out  to  be  a 
rational  aim,  but  the  latter  is  not  so  evidently 
desirable. 

There  are,  perhaps,  three  stages  of  science 
which  are  of  note,  first,  the  pure  empirical,  in 
which  the  scientist  devotes  himself  to  describing 
and  classifying  his  facts;  secondly,  the  merely 
hypothetical,  in  w^hich  hypotheses  to  connect  the 
described  facts  are  proposed,  and  lastly,  the  hypo- 
theti CO- deduction,  in  which  the  hypotheses  have 
been  sufficiently  verified  so  that  they  may  be 
taken  together  as  premises,  and  new  conclusions 
deduced  which  are  found  to  be  also  verified. 
Of  these  stages,  the  social  sciences  are  for  the 
most  part  in  the  first,  showing  only  spurts  to  the 
hypothetical;  the  natural  sciences  are  in  the  hy- 
pothetical stage  \\Tth  occasional  spurts  into  the 
hypothetico-deductive ;  but  mathematics  and  phi- 
losophy, the  sciences  least  dependent  upon  the 
details  of  the  concrete  facts  of  experience,  alone 
have  attained  the  third  stage  in  scientific  devel- 
opment, and  of  these,  philosophy  only  attains  it 
in  its  critically  reconstructive  periods.  Strangely 
enough  philosophy,  which  is  now  striving  self- 
consciously to  be  scientific,  has  unconsciously 
reached  a  high  develo{)ment  of  scientific  form. 
The  newly  conscious  impulse  is  but  a  redirection 
of  the  attention  upon  one  aspect  of  scientific  proc- 
ess, the  inductive,  which  was  left  in  the  background 
by  our  immediate  predecessors. 


458    MATHEMATICS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

To  sum  up  the  conclusions  of  this  paper  in  the 
light  of  our  original  problem,  the  mathematical 
method,  for  which  the  founders  of  modern  phi- 
losophy yearned,  is  nothing  else  than  universal 
scientific  method,  and  the  apparent  neglect  of 
mathematical  method  by  recent  philosophers  is  to 
be  explained  by  the  fact,  that  while  mathematics 
has  been  more  or  less  in  the  dark  as  to  her  own 
actual  procedure,  philosophers  have  been  discover- 
ing the  nature  of  scientific  method  independently, 
and  have  attained  considerable  proficiency  in  its 
use. 

The  recognition  of  this  fact  serves  to  throw 
light  on  some  sources  of  difficulty  in  philosophic 
systems;  errors  in  systems  can  be  distinguished 
from  differences  arising  from  different  points  of 
view,  and  the  criterion  of  simplicity  indicates  the 
possibility  of  still  further  differences  which  can 
exist  in  such  form  that  they  may  never  be  done 
away  with  even  if  all  problems  of  philosophy  are 
finally  resolved.  And  this  last  sort  of  differences, 
moreover,  does  not  lead  to  any  justifiable  preju- 
dice as  to  the  worth  of  different  philosophic  sys- 
tems, although  we  may  value  them  differently 
according  to  the  facility  with  which  they  handle 
those  problems  by  which  we  are  individually  most 
pressed. 


PRAGMATISM  IN  iESTHETICS 


PRAGMATISM  IN   ESTHETICS 

By  EL\te  Gordon 

1  HE  argument  of  this  paper  is  that  aesthetic  ex- 
perience iUustrates  and  confirms  the  teachings  of 
pragmatism.  It  is  stated  that  (1)  the  work  of  the 
artist  is  to  objectify  new  or  striking  emotions, 
that  (2)  the  subject  of  the  aesthetic  enjoyment 
accepts  these  emotions  and  acts  out  their  meaning, 
and  that  (3)  the  ultimate  meaning  of  beauty  is  to 
be  found  in  concrete  acts,  and  the  function  of  art 
is  to  produce  new  experience. 

Pragmatism  has  been  defined  as:  "The  doc- 
trine that  the  whole  *  meaning'  of  a  conception 
expresses  itself  in  practical  consequences,  conse- 
quences either  in  the  shape  of  conduct  to  be  rec- 
ommended, or  in  that  of  experiences  to  be  expected, 
if  the  conception  be  true ;  which  consequences 
would  be  different  if  it  were  untrue,  and  must  be 
different  from  the  consequences  by  which  the 
meaning  of  other  conceptions  is  in  turn  expressed. 
If  a  second  conception  should  not  appear  to  have 
other  consequences,  then  it  must  really  be  only 
the  first  conception  under  a  different  name.  In 
methodology  it  is  certain  that  to  trace  and  com- 

461 


462     PRAGMATISM  IN  .ESTHETICS 

pare  their  respective  consequences  is  an  admirable 
way  of  establishing  the  differing  meanings  of  dif- 
ferent conceptions."  ^  For  pragmatism,  as  I  under- 
stand it,  "significance"  is  a  much  more  engrossing 
category  than  is  "existence."  The  pragmatist 
looks  to  the  event,  the  outcome,  the  result  in  ex- 
perience of  a  conception  or  of  a  thing.  Dewey  ^ 
says  that  "things  .  .  .  are  what  they  are  experi- 
enced as."  Thus,  the  writing  pad  is  the  to-be- 
written-upon ;  a  mountain  is  the  looked-up-at,  the 
driven-over,  the  to-be-tunnelled-through,  etc.  To 
put  it  negatively,  that  which  amounts  to  nothing 
for  experience  is  nothing;  that  which  is  somehow 
"there"  but  never  by  any  chance  "here"  for  any- 
body is  pure  fiction. 

Perhaps  the  difference  between  pragmatic  and 
other  attitudes  can  be  illustrated  by  the  type  of 
reahty  and  worth  which  they  would  assign,  let  us 
say,  to  the  character  assumed  by  an  actor  on  the 
stage.  There  is  a  popular  opinion  that  the  actor 
who  is  playing  a  part  is  less  himself  at  that  moment 
than  one  who  assumes  nothing,  the  part  is  regarded 
as  something  foreign,  which  more  or  less  obscures 
the  real  character.  The  pragmatist  would  hold 
that  assuming  a  character  is  as  good  as  being  it  if 
one  assumes  it  thoroughly,  and  the  more  parts  one 
undertakes  the  more  is  one  a  personaUty.  In  "The 
Tragic  Muse"  the  young  actress  said  to  her  inter- 
locutor:   "And  do  you  think  I've  got  no  char- 

»  "Diet,  of  Phil,  and  Psy." 

»  Journal  of  PhU.  Psy.  and  Sci.  Method,  Vol.  II.  No.  15. 


KATE   GORDON  463 

acter?"  to  which  he,  pragmatically,  replied: 
"Delightful  being,  you've  got  a  hundred!" 

Significance  and  meaning  are  terms  which  have 
no  place  in  a  purely  mechanical  conception  of  the 
world;  in  nature  one  thing  does  not  "mean"  an- 
other; things  do  not  "signify"  except  in  a  pur- 
posive order.  All  things,  according  to  pragmatism, 
are  either  hindrances  or  furtherances  to  some  pur- 
pose. (It  should  not  be  necessary  to  add  that  in 
making  all  things  relative  to  purpose  one  is  not  re- 
ducing everything  to  psychology.  Certainly  there 
are  purposes  in  ethics,  in  logic,  in  aesthetics,  in 
sociology,  and  in  what  not  ?)  Given  a  purpose 
or  an  activity,  it  is  possible  to  analyze  in  it  certain 
termini,  an  end  towards  which,  and  one  from 
which,  the  process  moves,  but  it  would  be  quite 
perverse  to  say  that  these  points  "determine"  the 
process  in  the  sense  of  being  independent  objects 
which  exert  compulsion  upon  it.  Rather  is  it  true 
that  the  process  is  the  ground  or  determining 
source  of  the  termini.  Instead  of  two  points 
determining  a  line  it  is  the  line  which  determines 
the  points.  This  is  in  harmony  with  the  assertion 
that  objects  are  constituted  by  purposes. 

This  brief  statement  about  pragmatism  is  not 
intended  for  an  argument,  for  I  do  not  understand 
that  an  ultimate  philosophical  attitude  can  be 
argued.  Pragmatism  is  the  disposition  to  look  for 
final  explanations  in  terms  of  purpose,  and  for 
reality  in  experienced  satisfactions.    With  this  dis- 


464      PRAGMATISM  IN  ESTHETICS 

position  I  should  like  to  approach  the  field  of 
aesthetics.  ^Esthetic  discussion  may  be  classified 
for  this  purpose  under  three  general  heads :  (1)  the 
artist's  standpoint;  what  are  the  motives  to  art 
production?  what  is  meant  by  "self-expression," 
and  by  " objectification  of  emotion"  ?  in  what  way 
does  art  "relieve"  emotion?  (2)  the  standpoint  of 
the  appreciator  or  admirer  of  art;  what  is  the 
nature  of  aesthetic  enjoyment?  what  is  the  mean- 
ing of  "internal  imitation"  and  the  motor  ele- 
ments in  aesthetic  consciousness  ?  the  significance 
of  "disinterestedness,"  "objectivity,"  "immedi- 
acy," "absorption  of  subject  in  object"?  (3)  the 
origins  and  functions  of  art.  These  questions  can 
here  be  touched  of  course  only  in  the  most  summary 
way. 


The  term  "artist"  should  not  be  limited,  in 
aesthetic  discussion,  to  mean  merely  the  acknowl- 
edged masters  or  even  the  whole  professional  class, 
but  should  include  everybody  who  has  seriously 
tried  to  express  his  emotion  through  one  of  the 
recognized  media  of  artistic  production.  Hirn  ^ 
says :  "  If  the  notion  of  art  is  conceived  in  its  most 
general  sense,  every  normal  man,  at  some  time  of 
his  life  at  least,  is  an  artist  —  in  aspiration,  if  not 
in  capacity."    The  standpoint  of  the  aspirant  must 

»  "  The  Origins  of  Art,"  Chap.  II. 


KATE   GORDON  465 

indeed  have  something  in  common  w4th  that  of 
the  successful  master,  for  the  latter  is  considered 
to  have  expressed  not  only  his  own  feehng  but  also 
that  of  others. 

The  motives  to  art  production  may  be  extremely 
varied,  the  artist  may  work  for  money,  for  love, 
out  of  emulation,  or  fear,  etc.  (just  as  among  primi- 
tive people  arts  were  practised  for  the  sake  of  con- 
veying  information,    of    stimulating    fighting    and 
working  power,  of  exercising  magic  influence,  etc.), 
without  having  the  product  necessarily  vitiated  as 
a  work  of  art.     Yet  the  genuine  art  motive,  that 
which   is   there   apart  from   any   specific   external 
pressure,  is  somewhat  different  from  any   of  the 
motives   mentioned.      The    art-impulse    has    been 
derived,   according   to   different   authorities,   from 
the  tendency  to  imitate,  the  tendency  to  attract  by 
pleasing,    to    employ    surplus    energy ;     from    the 
desire  for  self-exhibition,  for  self-expression  to  re- 
lieve emotion,  and  to  objectify  feeling.     It  is  alhed 
to  the  instincts  of  play  and  of  sociability.     These 
tendencies   overlap   each   other   and    probably   all 
are  operative  in  artistic  activity,  but  the  categories 
of   self-expression   and   objectification   of   emotion 
give    perhaps    the    most    comprehensive    and    just 
characterization  of  the  meaning  of  the  art-imjHilse. 
AVhen  one  experiences  great  pleasure  or  joy,  the 
first  wish  is  to  keep  it  up  just  as  it  is,  but  that  failing 
one  is  impelled  to  express  the  experience  by  por- 
trayal, to  seek  an  image  which  will  revive  the  feel- 
so 


466     PRAGMATISM  IN  ESTHETICS 

ing.  Not  only,  however,  is  this  true  of  joy;  for 
when  an  uncommon  terror,  or  a  pecuhar  grief,  has 
been  endured  there  is  a  wish  not  to  let  the  memory 
of  it  wholly  die,  we  want  to  record  the  fact  in  order 
sometime  to  find  the  interpretation  of  it.  We  may 
say  in  general  that  whenever  there  is  a  striking 
emotional  experience,  or  a  feeling  not  fully  grasped, 
there  is  a  desire  to  express,  fix,  and  objectify  that 
feeling,  to  put  it  into  permanent  and  appeahng 
form. 

There  is  always  a  social  reference  in  this  desire 
for  expression.  Often  this  reference  is  patent,  so 
much  so  that  one  writer  makes  the  desire  "to  at- 
tract by  pleasing"  the  basis  of  art.  The  desire  for 
permanence  and  objectivity  is,  however,  itself 
ultimately  social;  for  only  that  which  makes  an 
impression  on  the  social  order  is  truly  rendered 
objective  or  permanent,  only  that  which  appeals 
deeply  to  people  is  the  monument  more  lasting 
than  bronze.  The  artist  in  working  for  others 
need  not  mean  by  society  any  definite  hving  per- 
son or  group  of  persons,  he  may  figure  it  as  pos- 
terity, an  ideal  group  or  an  ideal  person,  or  even 
himself  in  the  character  of  critic,  but  the  reference 
is  there  nevertheless  and  remains  social  in  its  es- 
sence. With  a  sincere  artist  this  wish  to  impose 
his  experience  on  others  is  not  an  undue  exaltation 
of  himself  but  is  the  legitimate  and  normal  desire 
to  establish  and  preserve  whatever  novel  emotions 
or  supreme  moments  his  experience  may  have  held. 


KATE   GORDON  467 

When  these  moments  are  once  translated  into  a 
medium  which  will,  as  it  were,  be  responsible  for 
them  then  an  important  part  of  the  artist's  desire 
is  accomplished.  He  may  rest  relieved  by  his 
work  of  art.  The  art-impulse  is  imitative  in  the 
sense  that  it  tends  to  reproduce  or  iterate  an  ex- 
perience which  the  artist  has  had ;  it  is  self- expres- 
sive and  self-exhibitive  in  that  the  artist  stamps 
his  idea  upon  society ;  it  works  off  surplus  energy 
in  the  sense  of  relieving  emotional  pressure.  Its 
spontaneity  together  with  its  constructive  and  its 
imitative  elements  suggest  the  play-instinct,  while 
the  instinct  of  sociability  is  at  the  bottom  of  the 
social  reference  mentioned.  The  complete  objec- 
tification  of  emotion  is  an  end  and  a  satisfaction 
of  the  art-impulse,  but,  as  we  have  seen,  this  very 
end  implies  that  the  emotion  felt  by  the  artist  is  to 
be  taken  up  into  the  social  process  and  lived  out. 


II 


The  second  group  of  questions  involves  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  standpoint  of  the  observer,  or  better, 
the  admirer  of  art.  The  generally  current  descrip- 
tions of  his  state  of  mind  say  that  his  pleasure  is 
disinterested,  objective,  and  universal,  that  aesthetic 
value  is  immediate  rather  than  discursive  or  "con- 
secutive," that  art  widens  the  sympathies,  that  it 
has  the  form  of  purposiveness  but  represents  no 


468      PRAGMATISM  IN  ESTHETICS 

purpose.  Some  writers  add  that  an  element  of 
pain  or  melancholy  is  aroused  by  beauty. 

The  disinterestedness  of  sesthetic  enjoyment  is 
expressed  also  as  a  detachment  from  desire,  as  a 
stilling  of  the  will,  impersonal  contemplation. 
The  immediacy  of  aesthetic  value  is  supposed  to 
distinguish  it  from  ethical  or  logical  or  economic 
values;  for  these  latter  may  be  means  to  an  end, 
they  may  be  valid  because  they  contribute  to  some 
other  thing  than  themselves,  whereas  in  beauty 
there  is  no  ulterior  ground,  no  reference  which 
accounts  for  the  value.  Further,  the  admirer  of 
beauty  feels  the  value  to  be  objective  and  uni- 
versal, that  is,  he  feels  his  pleasure  to  be  "the  qual- 
ity of  an  object."  Beauty  he  holds  to  be  sharable, 
and  to  be  addressed  normally  to  a  group  rather 
than  to  an  individual.  The  sensuous  element  in 
beauty  is  also  some  guarantee  of  its  objectivity; 
the  beautiful  is  always  something  which  we  may 
see  or  hear  or  touch,  which  gives  resistance  and 
stimulation  to  the  senses.  The  fact  that  art  widens 
the  sympathies  follows  from  its  universal  character. 

It  is  not,  I  think,  sufficiently  dwelt  upon  in 
aesthetics  that  every  moment  of  aesthetic  suscepti- 
bility is  to  some  extent  a  risk  and  an  adventure. 
The  absorption  of  the  subject  in  the  beautiful 
object  is  a  subjection  of  mind  analogous  to  a  mild 
hypnosis.  Our  motor  responses  and  "internal 
imitations"  are  often,  possibly  always,  the  basis  of 
our  interest,  the  means  to  our  emotional  appre- 


KATE   GORDON  469 

elation,  and  by  these  we  accept  and  realize  the 
suggested  feehngs.  UnUke  a  logical,  an  ethical,  or 
an  economic  absorption  in  which  propositions  and 
plans  of  action  are  considered,  and  a  judicial  atti- 
tude preserved,  aesthetic  absorption  is  in  a  thingy 
an  object  whose  dynamic  possibilities  are  not 
clearly  known,  it  is  more  of  an  unconditional  sur- 
render, and  more  like  encountering  a  person  than 
a  principle.  The  work  of  art  may  stimulate  inter- 
ests and  reactions  which  are  most  unlooked  for. 
That  is  where  the  adventure  comes  in. 

The  characteristics  of  the  aesthetic  conscious- 
ness, then,  are  a  remoteness  from  immediate 
self  interests,  a  suggestible  and  imitative  attitude 
towards  the  object,  and  an  allegiance  to  a  reality 
felt  to  be  independent  of  oneself.  But  back 
of  the  producer's  desire  to  objectify  emotion  and 
back  of  the  admirer's  acceptance  of  it  after  it  is 
objectified  is  the  desire  of  both  for  the  emotion 
itself.  In  every  normal  person  there  is  an  instinct 
for  excitement,  a  curiosity  about  the  untried  and  a 
liking  for  whatever  is  novel  and  stirring.  It  is 
this  which  sets  the  artist  hunting  for  new  emotions 
to  objectify,  and  this  which  first  draws  the  observer 
into  the  neighborhood  of  the  work  of  art. 


470     PRAGMATISM  IN  ^ESTHETICS 


III 


Mediating  between  the  producer  and  the  ad- 
mirer stands  the  work  of  art  itself.  It  is  the  end 
term  of  two  processes,  being  the  goal  or  ending 
point  of  the  artist's  endeavor,  but  the  starting 
point  or  at  least  the  point  of  redirection  for  the 
activity  of  the  admirer.  An  inquiry  concerning 
origins  and  functions  of  art  is  an  inquiry  for  the 
other  two  termini  of  the  art  process  —  the  begin- 
ning of  the  art- producing  and  the  end  of  the  art- 
enjoying  emotion.  If  art  production  is  based  on 
emotion  we  have  first  to  ask  where  the  emotion 
comes  from.  We  may  distinguish  a  psychological 
and  a  social  origin  for  it,  though  we  recognize  that 
for  primitive  mind  the  individual  and  social  inter- 
ests were  not  clearly  differentiated. 

The  theory  of  emotion  ^  which  regards  it  as  a 
phenomenon  of  interrupted  habit,  states  that  emo- 
tion is  the  consciousness  of  conflicting  impulses. 
Impulses  which  meet  with  no  resistance  get  carried 
smoothly  into  action,  and  the  rule  is  that  their 
owner  knows  and  feels  very  little  about  them ;  but 
let  an  impulse  be  checked,  or  rather  —  since  only 
an  impulse  can  check  an  impulse  —  let  there  be  a 
conflict  between  impulses  and  the  affair  appears 
in  consciousness  and  appears  an  emotion.  In 
feeling,  at  least,  the  theory  would  say  that  strife  is 

'  Dewey,  PhU.  Rev.,  Vola.  I.  and  HI.    Cf.  also  AngeU.  P»y..  Chap.  XIX. 


KATE   GORDON  471 

the  father  of  things.  Imagine  a  primitive  man 
approached  by  an  enemy ;  his  fighting  instinct  is 
aroused  and  he  starts  forward  to  make  an  attack. 
If  resistance  is  feeble  the  act  of  destruction  is 
shortly  completed  and  does  not  rise  far  into  the 
emotional  or  ideational  level.  But  if  the  enemy 
assumes  a  terrible  and  threatening  air  the  act  of 
destroying  him  is  at  least  postponed  a  little.  The 
instinct  of  fear  is  touched  in  the  aggressor  and  the 
impulse  to  cower  and  run  tends  to  check  his  attack. 
At  once  there  is  emotional  stir,  the  fighting  im- 
pulse reined-in  becomes  conscious  anger,  the  overt 
act  thus  blocked  remains  a  mere  attitude,  and  the 
result  is  an  angry  man  in  a  fighting  posture.  The 
most  desirable  thing  at  that  moment  in  the  world 
would  be  some  means  of  fixing  his  resolution  and 
augmenting  his  strength.  Now  the  primitive  per- 
son who  wants  to  do  something  but  dares  not, 
finds  a  satisfaction  in  going  repeatedly  as  far  as  he 
does  dare.  Repeated  threats  and  feints  and  pos- 
turings  thus  take  the  place  of  a  real  fight.  I  beheve 
that  such  a  situation  would  account  psychologic- 
ally for  the  origin  of  that  fundamental  form  of 
art  —  the  dance.  When  an  act  has  been  inter- 
cepted the  actor  records  that  moment,  and  in  a 
sense  objectifies  his  emotion,  by  the  repetition  of 
that  part  of  the  act  which  he  is  able  to  perform, 
namely  the  attitude.  If  the  posture  were  repeated 
often  enough  to  fall  into  a  rhythm  it  would  then 
constitute  a  dance  —  a  work  of  art.    According  to 


472      PRAGMATISM  IN  ESTHETICS 

this  account,  the  objectification  of  emotion  is  an 
objectification  of  conflict,  and  whoever  preserves 
an  emotion  preserves  an  ungratified  impulse,  a 
problem  unsolved  or  a  purpose  unfulfilled.  The 
performance  of  mimetic  dances  after  a  deed  is  com- 
plete, a  victory  won,  we  may,  it  is  true,  ascribe  to 
the  desire  to  revive  and  prolong  the  joy  of  success, 
but  this  type  of  commemoration  also  has  a  refer- 
ence to  the  future.  The  memory  of  one  feat  is 
kept  as  a  stimulus  to  the  next,  and  also  as  a  means 
of  attaining  social  consequence. 

As  to  the  social  origins  of  art,  we  are  told  that 
the  different  forms  of  art  were  evolved  as  useful 
accessories  to  certain  definite  ends,  that  the  func- 
tion of  the  artist  was  to  direct  and  incite  the  efforts 
of  a  social  group.  The  praesul  or  group  leader  in 
beating  out  the  rhythm  for  concerted  action,  and  in 
performing  a  pantomime  of  the  movements  to  be 
made,  furnished  concrete  imagery  for  his  group  — 
the  stimulus  of  a  literal  example.  In  their  historical 
beginnings  the  arts  were  useful  devices  for  attaining 
success  in  specific  types  of  activity.  In  the  interests 
of  the  fight  and  the  hunt,  of  love  and  religion,  of 
magic  and  work,  wherever,  in  a  word,  primitive  man 
wanted  to  exert  his  power  the  arts  came  in  to  stim- 
ulate and  enhance  it.  The  status  of  art  seems  to 
have  been  purely  instrumental.  Bucher  ^  says  that 
if  one  asks  a  Bulgarian  laborer  to  sing  a  harvest- 
song  in  winter  time  the  answer  is  sure  to  be: 

*  "Arbeit  u.  Rhythmus." 


KATE   GORDON  473 

"Es  sei  eine  Schande,  ein  solches  Lied  zu  singen, 
wenn  nicht  die  Zeit  dafiir  sei."  The  function  of 
art,  then,  was  not  at  first  so  much  a  stilling  as  it 
was  a  prodding  of  the  will. 

The  function  of  modern  art  is  of  course  a 
separate  question.  With  the  big  changes  that  have 
come  in  our  social  economy,  one  would  not  expect 
to  find  so  important  a  function  wholly  unchanged. 
In  the  modern  social  order  occupations  and  ideas 
are  much  more  numerous  in  kind.  With  the 
division  of  labor  has  come  the  multiplication 
of  types,  and  the  more  democratic  ideal.  Our 
ideal  community  is  not  one  in  which  every  man  is 
a  hunter  or  a  warrior  with  the  biggest  one  as  leader, 
but  rather  a  community  in  which  every  person  is 
doing  something  a  little  different  from  every 
other,  one  in  which  each  member  holds  a  position 
and  performs  a  service  which  is  unique,  and 
therefore  one  in  which  every  one  leads  in  some- 
thing. Now  in  such  a  society  of  individuals  what 
place  would  there  be  for  an  artist  of  the  primitive 
sort  .'*  With  everybody  wanting  to  do  a  different 
thing  it  would  be  impossible  to  be  a  praesul  and 
to  give  to  each  a  literal  example  of  what  he  was 
to  do.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  modern  artist  works 
as  a  rule  for  a  pubHc  not  present  to  him  in  the 
flesh,  and  often  for  persons  whom  he  will  never 
see.  This,  added  to  the  fact  that  his  public  repre- 
sents widely  divergent  interests  makes  the  notion 
of   personal   example   quite   remote.      And   yet   I 


474     PRAGMATISM  IN  .ESTHETICS 

believe  that  with  one  very  important  difference 
the  function  of  modern  art  is  essentially  the  same 
with  that  of  primitive  art.  The  difference  is  that 
modern  art  instead  of  giving  a  stimulus  to  a 
specific  act  gives  a  stimulus  of  a  much  more  gen- 
eral kind,  and  leaves  each  individual  to  hve  out  for 
himself  the  meaning  and  the  end  of  it. 

To  assert  that  the  function  of  art  is  to  stimulate 
to  ends,  of  whatever  sort,  is,  on  the  surface  anyway, 
a  direct  contradiction  of  the  idea  that  art  quiets 
the  will  and  absolves  from  desire.  Now  the  terms 
"disinterestedness"  and  "freedom  from  desire," 
and  the  notion  that  certain  values  are  immediate 
and  not  grounded  on  absent  things  do  stand 
unquestionably  for  a  certain  truth ;  but,  if  I  under- 
stand what  that  truth  is,  they  express  it  badly.  Lit- 
eral disinterestedness  is  an  artifact.  What  the  term 
is  used  to  signify  is  that  some  interests  (not  all)  are 
in  abeyance.  The  whole  point  for  aesthetics  is  to 
distinguish  which  interests  are  ignored  and  which 
are  thereby  fostered  when  one  contemplates  beauty. 
The  difference  seems  to  be  one  of  small  present 
interests  as  against  larger  and  more  remote  ones. 
Art,  though  it  no  longer  sets  one  on  to  instant 
deeds,  has  yet  a  far-reaching  influence  upon 
action.  Thus  there  is  no  one  particular  act  which 
a  plaintive  melody  could  be  relied  upon  to  stimu- 
late, but  it  might  very  well  induce  a  mood  of  ten- 
derness or  pity,  the  results  of  which,  though  not 
known,  we  must  not  suppose  lost.     A  beautiful 


KATE  GORDON  475 

object,  even  a  familiar  one,  has  something  in  it 
always  novel  and  re-creative,  and  in  this  sense 
represents  a  change  from  preceding  experience 
and  interests,  so  that  the  beauty  seems  not  to  de- 
pend upon  the  preceding  interest  for  its  value.  It 
is  not  apparently  mediated  or  arrived  at  but  given, 
is  not  hke  an  "answer"  in  arithmetic  which,  in- 
significant by  itself,  needs  the  preceding  problem 
which  it  answers  to  give  it  a  meaning.  To  say, 
however,  that  beauty  is  really  an  "immediate 
value,"  or  that  its  meaning  is  completely  ex- 
pressed in  its  form  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  and 
a  denial,  it  seems  to  me,  of  the  most  vital  element 
in  all  aesthetic  moments.  Value,  meaning,  signifi- 
cance, these  must  always  by  definition  imply  a 
standard  or  involve  a  reference.  The  pragmatic 
attitude  on  the  subject  would  be  that  the  meaning 
of  a  beautiful  object  is  to  be  sought  not  in  itself 
but  in  its  final  reference  to  concrete  acts ;  that  the 
aesthetic  moment,  hke  any  other,  must  be  placed 
in  a  purposive  order,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
a  completely  given  value. 

Evidence  is  not  wanting  that  the  person  going 
through  the  aesthetic  experience  demands  a  refer- 
ence to  some  purpose.  Recent  theories  regard 
aesthetic  consciousness  as  a  consequent  rather  than 
a  cause  of  art  production;  they  say  that  aesthetic 
appreciation  of  natural  beauty  is  developed  by 
first  appreciating  art.  The  aesthetic  consciousness 
would  thus  be  a  moment  not  given  by  nature  but 


476      PRAGMATISM  IN  ^ESTHETICS 

determined  by  art,  that  is,  developed  within  a 
human  process.  Again,  in  modern  theory,  the 
conception  of  the  characteristic  or  the  significant 
is  given  chief  place  in  the  definition  of  beauty,  and 
the  categories  of  congruity  and  fitness  are  also 
considered  relevant.  Now  nothing  is  merely  char- 
acteristic, etc.,  it  is  characteristic  or  significant  o/, 
congruous  with,  fit  for.  All  those  notions  involve 
a  reference.  Finally,  it  comes  out  in  experimental 
tests  on  aesthetic  problems  that  the  isolation  of 
the  aesthetic  object  is  a  source  of  disturbance  to 
the  subject.  Persons  asked  to  choose  the  more 
beautiful  of  two  colors,  the  more  pleasing  of  two 
circles  of  different  size,  and  the  better  of  rectangles 
of  different  proportions  often  find  it  unnatural  and 
difficult  to  make  a  choice  irrespective  of  some  use 
to  be  made  of  the  color  or  the  form.  Some  say  that 
they  have  no  "favorite"  color  in  the  abstract,  but 
have  different  favorites  for  different  purposes.  One 
person  among  my  subjects  who  had  been  trying  to 
choose  among  rectangles  (including  the  golden  sec- 
tion) at  last  exclaimed:  "Heaven  knows  I  would 
be  glad  to  yearn  for  one  of  those  things  to  please 
you,"  but  declared  it  impossible  to  like  them  apart 
from  some  imagined  purpose  (i.  e.,  as  used  for  a 
picture-frame,  a  book-cover,  etc.).  My  experience 
has  been  that  questions  like  "  Which  is  longer,  or 
darker,  or  bluer,"  etc.,  are  accepted  and  answered 
as  a  matter  of  course,  but  that  the  questions  "  Which 
is  better  or  more  beautiful,  which  do  you  prefer," 


KATE   GORDON  477 

are  troublesome  and  often  call  out  the  demand 
for  further  explanation.  Another  fact  which  suo^- 
gests  the  dependent  nature  of  beauty  is  the 
part  sometimes  played  by  the  object's  position 
in  a  series  of  objects.  Martin  ^  found  that  chang- 
ing the  relative  position  of  simple  curves  could 
change  their  relative  aesthetic  value.  In  unpub- 
lished tests  of  my  own  on  circles  of  different  sizes 
and  rectangles  of  different  proportions  the  same 
point  came  out,  the  choice  seemed  to  be  affected 
by  the  position  which  the  figure  held  in  the  series 
presented.  For  example,  in  a  graduated  series  let- 
tered a,  b,  c,  d,  etc.,  figures  a,  b,  and  c  were 
shown  together  and  the  subject  chose  b  as  most 
pleasing;  then  b,  c,  and  d  were  presented  and 
the  subject  chose  c.  Now  since  b  and  c  were 
together  for  comparison  both  times  it  would  seem 
that  it  was  not  the  figure  itself  but  its  position 
wdiich  determined  the  preference.  In  this  exam- 
ple the  middle  figure  was  chosen  both  times.  ^ 
These  facts  point  to  the  conclusion  that  aesthetic 
experience  is  less  able  to  stand  by  itself  than  has 
been  supposed. 

If  it  were  granted,  however,  that  the  aesthetic 
moment  did  derive  its  value  from  a  purpose  and 
was  not  in  any  literal  way  free  from  desire,  there 
would  still  remain  to  be  explained  that  feeling  of 
freedom    w^hich   is   so   often   observed   as   accom- 

»  Pm^.  Rev.,  Vol.  XIII,  No.  3. 

'  Cf.  also  Witmer,  Phil.  Stud.,  IX,  p.  128,  for  a  like  result 


478     PRAGMATISM  IN  ESTHETICS 

panying  the  appreciation  of  beauty.  Freedom, 
as  any  one  would  agree,  rests  upon  the  power  of 
choice,  hence  there  is  no  freedom  unless  there  are 
at  least  two  things  to  choose  from.  And,  con- 
versely, the  person  who  has  possible  alternatives 
is  a  free  agent,  and  the  broader  the  field  of  his 
possibihties  the  greater  his  sense  of  freedom.  Ac- 
cording to  the  theory  of  emotion  cited  above 
every  emotion  represents  more  than  one  possible 
action  —  is  in  fact  the  consciousness  of  conflicting 
impulses.  The  very  presence  of  emotion  is  there- 
fore an  appropriate  situation  for  the  sense  of  free- 
dom, being  a  moment  of  suspended  choice,  or 
balance  of  alternatives. 

If  art  is  stimulative  is  it  possible  to  name  some 
of  the  concrete  acts  which  it  instigates  ?  If  it  has 
meaning,  exactly  what  does  it  mean  to  have  us  do  ? 
It  is  not,  I  think,  possible  always,  or  even  often,  to 
name  the  precise  outcome  in  action  of  a  work  of 
art.  It  has  already  been  said  above  that  the  stim- 
ulus of  art  is  generic  rather  than  specific,  and  I 
should  like  to  dwell  a  little  at  this  point  on  that 
distinction.  The  works  of  Millet  and  Breton  must 
certainly  modify  the  attitude  of  many  people  to- 
wards the  laborer  of  the  field,  yet  it  is  impossible 
to  say  exactly  what  acts  those  pictures  inspire; 
acts  of  charity  perhaps,  but  they  certainly  do  not 
sohcit  gross  and  obvious  charities,  nor  would  these 
express  the  intention  of  the  pictures.  The  picture 
of  the  Man  with  the   Hoe  inspired  Markham's 


KATE   GORDON  479 

poem,  and  picture  and  poem  inspire  their  public 
with  a  sense  of  social  responsibihty  and  a  feehng 
of  a^vful  compassion.  The  result  of  this  should 
be  some  bettering  of  social  conditions,  that  is, 
better  social  conditions  would  express  the  ulti- 
mate intention  of  such  works  of  art  (whether  that 
were  consciously  intended  by  the  artist  or  not), 
but  just  how  to  get  better  conditions,  exactly 
what  to  do  we  must  find  out  not  from  the  work 
of  art  but  rather  from  social  science.  Art  inspires 
merely  the  emotional  stage  of  the  reform.  To 
take  another  illustration,  martial  music  is  be- 
lieved to  have  an  effect  upon  the  action  of  soldiers, 
but  while  it  may  inspire  courage  it  takes  the  in- 
teUigence  of  military  science  to  narrow  the  emo- 
tion into  the  effective  and  desired  concrete  act. 
Here,  too,  art  carries  the  actor  only  as  far  as  the 
emotional  stage  of  action.  He  feels  urgently  that 
he  must  do  something,  but  art  furnishes  only  in  a 
general  way  the  notion  of  what  he  shall  perform. 
The  meaning  of  art  is  thus  a  felt  meaning  not 
a  definitely  known  one.  This  is  the  striking  dif- 
ference between  aesthetic  appreciation  and  logical 
judgment.  Every  judgment  is  something  of  an 
equation,  a  balancing  process  in  which  a  certain 
equivalence  is  predicated.  One  thing  is  said  to  be 
another,  that  is,  every  subject  about  which  any- 
thing is  judged  is  in  a  manner  balanced  by  its 
predicates.  Now  ^^^th  aesthetic  appreciation  there 
is   not   just   that   kind   of   balance   present;    the 


480     PRAGMATISM  IN  .ESTHETICS 

beautiful  object  is  there  as  the  subject  about 
which  one's  feehng  hangs,  but  its  precise  valua- 
tion in  the  way  of  definite  predicates  is  wanting. 
It  deserves  predicates  but  they  are  at  the  moment 
unknown  quantities.  The  work  of  art  has  a  weight 
and  a  meaning,  but  at  the  moment  of  felt  effect  it 
has  not  yet  been  fully  translated  into  that  mean- 
ing. It  is  this  felt  but  undefined  significance  which 
makes  the  mystery  of  great  art  —  the  face  of  Mona 
Lisa  so  full  of  significance,  is  equally  full  of  mys- 
tery and  of  things  unknown;  one  is  not  sure  even 
whether  her  smile  is  sinister  or  benign  —  if  in- 
deed it  is  a  smile. 

The  function  of  art,  then,  is  to  preserve  and 
present  meanings  at  their  emotional  stage,  before 
they  have  become  explicit,  definite,  or  solved. 
Since  every  emotion  is  an  unsolved  problem  or  a 
conflict,  the  artist  is  he  who  discovers  and  founds 
problems,  and  his  business  is  to  put  them  into 
persistent  form.  The  artist  part  of  each  of  us  is 
the  part  which  leads  us  into  emotional  complex- 
ities and  hazards,  and  this  impulse  is  satisfied 
only  when  we  are  involved  in  an  objective  situa- 
tion. This  impulse  is  at  bottom  very  much  the 
same  as  that  which  leads  one  in  any  sport  to  wish 
for  a  hard  game.  It  is  the  experimental  or  ad- 
venturous side  of  our  nature,  and  the  satisfaction 
of  the  impulse  is  reached  when  one  is  confronted 
by  a  stiff  opposition.  As  some  one  has  said,  "On 
ne  reste  que  sur  ce  qui  resiste."    On  the  intellect- 


KATE   GORDON  481 

ual  level  this  desire  seems  to  me  no  other  than  the 
desire  for  an  objectively  real  world  in  which  to 
think  and  feel  and  act.  Every  one  can  at  times 
sympathize  with  Rasselas  in  his  wush  to  escape 
from  the  Happy  Valley. 

Much  of  the  criticism  of  pragmatism  rests  upon 
the  feeling  that  pragmatism  does  not  do  justice  to 
the  difficulties  of  the  human  situation,  does  not 
recognize  the  stubborn  character  of  objects  and 
oppositions.  We  may  answer  this  (aside  from 
the  answer  that  nowhere  is  opposition  more 
difficult  or  real  than  between  different  purposes) 
by  saying  that  one  may  recognize  opposition  itself 
as  part  of  a  purpose  and  as  satisfaction  of  an 
impulse. 

Finally,  the  pragmatic  view  of  aesthetics  recog- 
nizes the  aesthetic  moment  as  a  problem,  not  as  a 
solution,  a  beginning  rather  than  an  end.  The 
pragmatic  view  of  art,  I  should  say,  is  this,  that 
art  is  not  essentially  an  imitation  of  life  —  a  copy 
of  something  done  and  finished  before  art  took  it 
up,  but  that  life  is  a  copy  and  imitation  of  art.  If 
art  is  the  "image  of  life"  it  is  more  a  prophetic 
than  an  historic  image.  Thus,  Henry  James  has 
created  for  us  many  situations,  put  things  in  our 
lives  that  were  not  there  before;  and  Meredith 
has  made  persons.  After  seeing  a  Turner  one 
sees  more  form  and  color  in  a  sky.  We  see  beauty 
in  nature  because  we  see  it  as  a  picture.  The  genre 
in  art  has  given  us  an  interest  in  common  things, 

SI 


482     PRAGMATISM  IN  .ESTHETICS 

we  can  see  them  at  last  because  we  see  that  they 
are  a  pageant.  In  other  words,  art  if  it  is  stimu- 
lative and  instrumental  must  be  prior  to  that  which 
it  effects.  Life  and  nature  are  in  a  vital  sense  ex- 
perienced as  products  of  art. 


THE   CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATION 


THE   CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATION 

By  R.  S.  Woodworth 

1  WO  points  of  method  long  since  impressed  me 
in  the  psychology  of  Professor  James :  on  the 
one  hand  his  recognition  of  the  great  variety  of 
experience  and  consequent  distrust  of  easy  sim- 
plifications and  unifications  —  a  lack  of  undue 
veneration  for  the  law  of  parsimony  —  and  on  the 
other  hand  his  whole-hearted  acceptance  of  the 
physiological  point  of  view.  It  is  then  quite  in 
the  spirit  of  a  pupil  that  I  have  urged  the  need  of 
giving  up  a  purely  sensationalistic  psychology,  as 
neither  adequate  to  the  variety  of  mental  facts,  nor 
consonant  with  the  probable  functions  of  the  brain. 
There  are  facts  of  consciousness  which  do  not 
readily  fit  into  a  sensationalistic  classification. 
They  are  not  sensations  as  we  ordinarily  use  the 
term,  and  they  are  not  images  if  images  are  de- 
scribed in  terms  of  sensation. 

Some  persons,  though  not  all,  are  able  to  de- 
tect, in  their  thinking,  moments  bare  of  recogniz- 
able imagery,  containing  no  sensations  of  interest 
—  moments,  nevertheless,  of  mental  alertness  and 
of    keen   consciousness.     In   answering    Galton's 

485 


486     CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

questions  regarding  the  breakfast- table,  they  af- 
firm that  they  think  of  the  various  items  without 
anything  like  a  sensible  picture  of  them.  In  vol- 
untary action,  they  say  that,  though  they  know 
perfectly  well  what  act  they  are  about  to  perform, 
they  do  not  represent  it  in  visual,  kinesthetic, 
verbal,  or  other  sensory  terms.  In  solving  prob- 
lems, they  declare  that  the  solution  first  appears 
in  a  non-sensory  form,  which,  however,  is  clearly 
conscious.  Even  in  sense  perception,  many  per- 
sons find  that  the  thing  as  it  is  momentarily  sensed 
is  but  the  sign  of  the  thing  as  it  is  thought  of,  while 
nevertheless  the  thing  as  thought  of  does  not  appear 
in  consciousness  with  any  sensory  qualities  but 
those  which  are  presented  at  the  moment.  As  all 
students  of  imagery  from  Galton  down  have  found, 
the  persons  who  make  these  statements  are  often 
men  of  high  intelligence  and  scientific  training, 
sometimes  they  are  psychologists  with  special 
training  in  self-observation.  Their  observations 
cannot  be  swept  aside  as  untrustworthy. 

It  is  ultra-parsimonious  for  the  psychologist  to 
try  to  keep  house  without  these  facts.  They 
should  be  admitted  in  a  generous  spirit  and  al- 
lowed the  independent  standing  in  our  classifica- 
tion which  they  seem  to  demand.  There  is  no 
demand,  emanating  from  the  facts  themselves, 
that  they  be  classed  as  sensations;  they  are  not 
observed  as  sensory  complexes.  It  is  only  be- 
cause our  scheme  of  classification  is  not  generous 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  487 

enough,  because  our  zeal  for  parsimony  is  exces- 
sive, that  we  insist  they  must  be  sensations  or 
sensory  images  in  disguise. 

Physiologically,  the  argument  is  as  follows:  we 
cannot  pretend  that  all  the  functions  of  the  brain 
are  sensory,  concerned  exclusively  with  the  recep- 
tion of  stimuli  or  with  the  reproduction  of  activi- 
ties appropriate  to  the  reception  of  stimuh.  If  you 
pass  in  review  the  functions  that  are  evidenced  by 
our  thought  and  behavior,  you  cannot  reduce  them 
all  to  sensation.  If  you  consider  the  known  locali- 
zation of  functions,  you  find  only  a  small  part  of 
the  brain  devoted  to  the  senses.  If  you  consider 
the  findings  of  brain  pathology,  you  conclude  that 
not  all  loss  of  function  is  describable  as  loss  of  sen- 
sation. Now,  though  it  would  be  bad  logic  to  infer 
consciousness  from  brain  function,  the  physiolog- 
ical evidence  of  non-sensorv  functions  mves  addi- 
tional  weight  and  significance  to  the  introspective 
evidence  of  non-sensory  consciousness. 

Among  the  functions  which  appear  in  human 
thought  and  behavior,  though  not  as  yet  revealed 
by  brain  physiology,  is  that  of  reaction  to  the  rela- 
tions of  things.  I  leave  aside  for  the  moment  the 
question  of  whether  there  is  any  special  conscious- 
ness of  relation,  and  ask  only  whether  we  become 
adjusted  to  relations,  and  whether  this  sort  of  ad- 
justment is  anything  different  from  adjustment  to 
sense  stimuli.  The  question  admits  of  but  one  an- 
swer.     Certainly  we  react  to  relations  of  size  and 


488    CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

shape,  of  distance  and  direction,  of  before  and 
after  in  time,  of  likeness  and  difference,  and 
many  others.  Let  two  objects  be  before  our  eyes : 
without  any  change  in  our  sensation  of  them,  we 
react  now  to  one  relation,  now  to  another,  of  the 
many  which  hold  between  them.  The  adjust- 
ment to  any  particular  relation  is  something  addi- 
tional to  the  perception  of  the  objects.  The  failure 
to  become  adjusted  to  any  one  of  them  is  not  a  de- 
fect in  the  reception  of  the  stimulus.  The  change 
in  adjustment  from  one  relation  to  another  is  not  a 
change  in  the  mode  of  receiving  the  stimulus. 

Dropping  now  into  terminology  that  impHes 
consciousness,  I  say  that  given  the  same  sense- 
presentation,  we  may  successively  observe  numer- 
ous relations  within  it.  Looking  at  the  pictures  on 
the  wall,  we  notice,  first,  that  one  is  larger  than  an- 
other, then  that  it  is  more  nearly  square,  that  it  is 
farther  to  the  right,  nearer,  done  in  brighter  colors, 
more  pleasing.  We  pass  from  one  of  these  relations 
to  another,  losing  consciousness  of  one  as  we  gain 
consciousness  of  another.  All  the  while  the  sense 
presentation  remains  constant,  nor  are  we  con- 
scious, usually,  of  additions  and  subtractions  of 
imagery.  What,  then,  is  the  change  in  conscious- 
ness which  occurs  when  a  relation  appears  or  dis- 
appears.? Words  may  appear  and  disappear, 
different  movements  may  be  made;  but  these 
reactions  seem  often  to  follow  the  first  perception 
of   the   relation.      The   most   straightforward   de- 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  489 

scription  of  the  changes  in  consciousness  is  that  a 
feeling  of  relation  comes  and  goes.  If  there  be  such 
a  thing  as  a  feeling  of  relation  corresponding  to  the 
adjustment  to  the  relation,  the  change  in  conscious- 
ness offers  no  peculiar  difficulty  to  description. 

To  get  a  little  first-hand  information  regarding 
the  adjustment  to  relations  and  the  accompany- 
ing consciousness,  I  have  employed  a  simple  form  of 
experiment,  in  which  a  relation  is  presented  by 
means  of  two  terms  between  which  it  holds,  and 
a  third  term  is  given  to  which  a  fourth  is  to  be 
found  such  that  it  bears  the  same  relation  to  the 
third  as  the  second  bears  to  the  first.  In  other 
words,  the  problem  is  one  in  the  "rule  of  three," 
extended  to  other  than  numerical  relations,  a  :  b  : : 
c  :  x;   find  x. 

In  one  form  of  this  experiment  the  terms  were 
cards  of  two  colors  (red  and  green),  of  two  shades, 
of  three  shapes  (squares,  rectangles  twice  as  long 
as  wide,  and  rectangles  four  times  as  long  as  wide), 
and  of  two  sizes  (the  squares  being  of  6  and  3  cm. 
sides).  With  this  material  laid  out  before  the 
subject,  a  pair  could  be  chosen  to  present  any 
one  of  a  considerable  number  of  relations,  simple 
and  compound.  The  pair  might  be  alike  in  all 
respects ;  the  problem  was  then  the  sim[)le  one  of 
finding  a  fourth  term  exactly  like  the  third.  Or, 
the  second  term  might  have  the  same  color  as 
the  first,  but  a  darker  shade,  the  same  height  as  the 


490     CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

first  but  only  half  its  width.  The  first  pair  were 
placed  side  by  side,  and  the  third  term  below  the 
first;  the  subject,  if  an  adult,  was  asked  "to  find 
a  fourth  card  which  should  have  the  same  rela- 
tion to  the  third  as  the  second  had  to  the  first." 
Adults  readily  perceived  relations  presented  in  this 
way,  though  not  always  so  accurately  as  was  in- 
tended; they  often  though  not  always  named  the 
relation.  The  experiment  was  of  more  interest 
when  tried  on  children;  so  far  I  have  tried  it  on 
one  boy  of  three-and-a-half  years.  Laying  two 
cards  side  by  side,  I  said,  *'We  will  put  these 
two  together,"  and,  placing  a  third  below  the  first, 
asked,  "Which  card  will  go  with  this  one  then.?" 
If  the  child  failed  to  find  the  proper  card  quickly, 
I  picked  it  out  for  him,  saying,  "You  see  these 
two  go  together  just  as  the  first  two  go  together." 
Then  I  placed  a  fifth  card  below  the  first  and  third, 
and  asked  him  to  find  its  mate.  It  was  not  hard 
to  interest  the  child  in  this  game,  nor  to  make  him 
understand  the  rules  of  the  game.  To  the  simpler 
relations  he  reacted  quickly  and  surely;  to  the 
more  complex  with  some  hesitation  and  error,  but, 
unless  the  relation  was  very  complicated,  he  per- 
ceived it  at  least  roughly.  He  was  clearly  not  act- 
ing at  random;  and  he  was  clearly  matching 
according  to  the  relation  presented,  and  not  ac- 
cording to  the  character  of  the  individual  terms. 
He  reacted  successfully  to  relations  for  which  he 
had  no  names.     It  was  clear  that  he  was  able  to 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  491 

detach  a  relation  from  one  pair  of  terms  and  transfer 
it  to  another,  and  that  the  transfer  was  not  always 
accomplished  by  aid  of  the  name  of  the  relation. 

The  experiment  was  tried  in  another  form  with 
adults,  for  the  purpose  of  gaining  introspective 
evidence  of  the  manner  in  which  the  relation  was 
present  in  consciousness  during  this  process  of 
transfer  from  one  pair  of  terms  to  another.  The 
problem  took  again  the  form,  a:b::c:x,  this  form 
being  chosen  because  it  does  not  supply, ready-made, 
any  name  or  other  means  of  holding  the  relation 
in  mind.  The  relations  employed  were  a  varied 
assortment,  of  which  the  following  are  examples : 

London  :  England  : :  Paris  :  ? 

Mice  :  cats  ::  worms  :  ? 

Eyes  :  face  : :  a  lake  :  ? 

The  hand  :  the  fist  ::  a  nation  :  ? 

A  church  organ  :  a  banjo  : :  Hamlet  :  ? 
From  such  experiments  I  received  the  following 
kinds  of  testimony  as  to  the  feelings  aroused : 

1.  When  the  relation  is  easy  to  grasp  and  the 
missing  term  readily  found,  very  little  conscious- 
ness appears.  "There  was  nothing  in  my  mind," 
said  one  of  my  subjects,  "except  that  I  wanted  to 
answer  your  question  right."  The  answer  comes 
immediately  on  hearing  the  three  given  terms; 
as  in  the  case,  "A  boy  :  a  man  ::  a  girl  :  .^" 

2.  When  there  is  more  difficulty,  the  relation 
sometimes  receives  a  name  before  the  answer  is 
found.     In   seeking   a  fourth   term   for   the   trio: 


492    CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

"Jimmie  :  James  ::  Bessie  :  ?'*  the  word  "nick- 
name" appeared  in  consciousness. 

3.  Sometimes  the  relation  is  pictured  in  some 
form  of  imagery.  In  solving  the  problem,  "Uncle  : 
aunt  ::  bull  :  .^"  one  subject  had  a  visual  image  of 
sexual  relations.  In  solving  the  problem,  "Yel- 
low :  blue  ::  violet  :  .?"  one  subject  got  a  sche- 
matic image  of  the  color  circle,  and  a  sort  of  motor 
image  of  drawing  a  diameter  across  from  the 
violet  to  the  yellow-green. 

4.  Sometimes  the  subject  reported  that  he  felt 
the  relation,  but  did  not  name  it  nor  have  an 
image  of  it,  as  in  the  case,  "Bravery  :  courage  :: 
good  humor  :  .''" 

In  this  form  of  exercise,  the  relation  is  suggested 
by  means  of  two  terms  between  which  it  holds, 
plus  a  third  term  which  serves  to  indicate  which  of 
the  possible  relations  between  the  first  two  terms  is 
chosen.  The  relation  must  now  be  detached  from 
the  first  pair  of  terms  and  transferred  to  another 
case.  In  the  process  of  transfer,  the  relation  some- 
times does  not  exist  at  all  in  consciousness.  Some- 
times it  has  a  name  or  image  as  its  vehicle  —  an 
image  which  is  applicable  alike  to  the  case  from 
which  the  transfer  is  made  and  to  the  case  to  which 
the  transfer  is  made.  Sometimes,  however,  and 
very  often  indeed,  the  transfer  is  accomplished 
without  such  a  vehicle,  though  the  relation  remains 
in  consciousness.  The  feeling  of  relation  appears 
then  as  an  "imageless  thought,"  and  seems  as  sub- 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  493 

stantial  a  component  of  consciousness  as  are  the 
feelings  of  the  terms.  It  has  as  good  a  right  to  an 
independent  standing  in  psychological  classifica- 
tion as  any  other  feeling. 

To  allow  any  independence  to  relations  will  per- 
haps seem  a  very  radical  step,  since  they  are  agreed, 
in  logic,  to  have  no  standing  or  substance  apart 
from  their  terms.  The  terms  might  perhaps  exist 
without  the  relation,  but  the  relation  without  the 
terms  —  never  !  This  form  of  criticism,  though 
no  doubt  serviceable  in  logic,  is  distinctly  inappli- 
cable to  psychology.  Just  as  the  axiom,  "The 
whole  is  equal  to  the  sum  of  its  parts,"  useful  in 
mathematics,  cannot  be  carried  over  into  psy- 
chology in  the  form,  "The  feeling  of  the  whole  is 
equal  to  the  sum  of  the  feelings  of  the  parts,"  so  the 
logical  axiom  that  a  relation  is  nothing  without  its 
terms  should  not  be  psychologically  misinterpreted 
to  mean  that  a  feeling  of  relation  is  nothing  without 
the  feelings  of  its  terms.  The  feeling  of  a  relation 
may  exist  without  the  feeling  of  any  pair  of  terms, 
as  when  w^e  seek  a  pair  of  terms  which  shall  stand 
in  a  given  relation  —  for  example,  that  of  great 
dissimilarity  —  or  as  when,  having  the  relation 
and  one  term  given,  we  seek  for  the  missing  term. 
Adjustment  to  a  relation  is  not  included  in  the 
adjustment  to  its  terms,  nor  is  consciousness  of  a 
relation  included  in  the  consciousness  of  the  terms. 
The  relation  may  be  detached  in  thought  from  its 


494     CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

terms,  even  as  a  quality  may  be  detached  from  a 
thing.  Such  detachment  is  necessary  for  thought 
to  progress,  since  what  is  observed  in  one  case  is 
to  be  applied  to  another. 

Feelings  of  relationship  have  a  present  standing 
in  psychology  mostly  in  their  evanescent  or  tran- 
sitive form.  On  hearing  them  spoken  of,  one  is 
reminded  first  of  all  of  the  "Stream  of  Thought," 
and  of  the  convincing  way  in  which  they  are  there 
used  to  exemplify  those  transitions  in  thought 
which,  though  dynamically  important,  are  so  fleet- 
ing as  almost  to  elude  observation.  But  I  do  not 
understand  the  author  of  the  "Stream  of  Thought" 
to  assert  that  feelings  of  relation  must  always  be 
evanescent.  We  do  not  speak  of  "a  feehng  of  o/," 
"a  feeling  of  hut,^^  because  the  feelings  expressed 
by  these  words  are  of  so  transitional  a  character 
that  they  will  not  stand  still  to  be  made  the  resting 
place  for  thought.  But  we  do  speak  of  feehngs  of 
possession  and  of  opposition.  That  is  to  say,  the 
same  relations  which  are  sometimes  felt  in  so  tran- 
sitive a  way  that  only  a  preposition  or  conjunction 
can  express  the  feeling,  may  also  be  felt  strongly 
and  substantively,  dwelt  on,  and  made  the  subjects 
of  discourse.  Corresponding  to  prepositions  and 
other  relative  parts  of  speech  can  usually  be  found 
nouns,  adjectives,  and  verbs  which  are  used  to  ex- 
press the  same  relations  when  they  become  the 
topic  of  thought.  Prepositions  themselves  often 
receive  an  emphasis  which  indicates  that  the  feel- 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  495 

ings  which  they  express  are  the  emphatic  parts  of 
consciousness:  "With  or  without,"  "Before  or 
behind  time,"  "He  that  is  not  for  me  is  against 
me."  There  are  other  rehitions  which  have  no  rela- 
tive parts  of  speech  to  express  them  in  the  quick 
and  transitive  form,  and  which  are  often  the  topic 
of  thought;  superiority  and  inferiority,  hkeness 
and  difference,  order  and  disorder,  cost  and  value, 
cheapness,  economy,  propriety,  and  aptitude  are 
examples.  Some  of  these  have  prepositions  now  in 
course  of  formation.  A  relation  which  has  become 
familiar  and  which  has  frequently  to  be  recognized 
and  acted  upon,  tends,  like  any  other  subject  of 
thought,  to  be  felt  in  a  cursory  and  transitional 
way,  and  so  to  demand  something  like  a  preposi- 
tion for  its  expression.  Things  and  qualities,  as 
well  as  relations,  may  be  thought  of  in  a  transi- 
tional way,  especially  when  they  are  very  familiar; 
but  some  of  the  relations  are  perhaps  more  familiar 
than  any  thing  or  quality.  Few  things  or  qualities 
arc  so  common,  or  at  least  so  commonly  dealt  with, 
as  the  relations  of  near  and  far,  more  or  less,  mine 
and  thine.  So  practised  do  we  become  in  dealing 
with  them  that  we  slide  over  them  with  little  hesita- 
tion ;  yet  perhaps  there  is  none  of  them  but  can 
be  made  the  object  of  prolonged  scrutiny. 

The  lack  of  unity  in  a  relation,  its  two-endedness 
from  the  point  of  view  of  logic,  creates  no  genuine 
difficulty  in   psychology.      Because    a   relation   is 


496     CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

bifurcated  it  does  not  follow  that  the  feeling  of  it 
is  any  less  a  unit  than  any  other  feeling.  The  re- 
action to  a  bifurcated  stimulus  may  be  as  simple 
and  single  as  other  reactions.  If,  in  putting  to- 
gether a  machine,  we  observe  two  parts  which  fit 
together,  our  reaction  to  this  relation  is  a  unit.  The 
reaction  need  not  preserve  the  complexity  of  the 
stimulus ;  and  what  is  thus  true  of  motor  reactions 
applies  equally  well  to  central  adjustments.  The 
adjustment  to  a  relation  is  a  unit,  and  the  feeling 
of  a  relation  has  none  of  the  heart-rending  com- 
plexity and  self-disruptiveness  which  so  troubles 
the  student  of  metaphysics. 

In  terms  of  brain  action:  a  complex  stimulus, 
affecting  many  and  diverse  parts  of  the  brain, 
may,  through  them,  and  as  the  combined  result  of 
their  activity,  bring  into  action  some  one  part  or 
little  organ;  and  the  action  of  this  organ,  once 
aroused,  is  as  simple  as  the  action  of  an  organ  that  is 
aroused  by  a  simple  stimulus.  There  is  no  law  that 
a  complex  cause  produces  a  complex  effect,  or  that  a 
simple  cause  produces  a  simple  effect ;  instead,  com- 
position and  resolution  of  forces  are  so  common 
as  to  be  almost  the  rule.  In  the  nervous  system,  we 
have  abundant  evidence  of  the  convergence  and 
divergence  of  stimuli;  one  organ  may  be  excited 
by  the  joint  influence  of  several  organs,  and  sev- 
eral organs  may  be  simultaneously  excited  by  the 
branching  influence  of  one  organ.  A  relation,  how- 
ever  complex   its   manner   of    presentation,    may 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  497 

arouse  a  single  organ  to  activity.  It  does  this, 
sooner  or  later  in  its  progress  through  the  brain, 
as  is  evidenced  by  the  unity  of  the  motor  response 
when,  for  example,  we  name  the  relation  that 
holds  between  two  presented  terms.  The  unity 
perhaps  does  not  arise  until  the  motor  parts  of  the 
brain  are  reached ;  but  it  seems  much  more  prob- 
able, in  view  of  the  large  areas  of  the  cortex  which 
are  available  for  operations  intervening  between 
sensation  and  movement,  as  well  as  of  the  patho- 
logical evidence  that  such  operations  are  localized 
and  have  organs  of  their  own ;  in  view  further  of 
the  fact  that  we  become  adjusted  to  perceived 
relations  without  any  evidence  of  corresponding 
motor  response  at  the  moment  of  adjustment ;  and 
in  view  of  the  feelings  of  relation  —  in  view  of  all 
these  facts  it  seems  most  probable  that  the  unity  of 
adjustment  to  relations,  groups,  and  other  complex 
stimuli  is  a  function,  not  of  the  motor  areas,  but  of 
parts  of  the  large  region  which  goes  by  the  name 
of  the  "association  areas." 

If  there  are  organs  or  foci  in  the  cortex,  the  ac- 
tivity of  which  constitutes  an  adjustment  to  a  pre- 
sented relation,  there  seems  no  reason  why  there 
should  not  be  corresponding  feelings,  nor  why 
these  feelings  should  not  have  the  general  charac- 
teristics of  other  feelings  —  for  example,  why 
they  should  not  be  as  simple  as  other  feelings.  And 
introspection  seems  to  show  that  they  are  as  simple 
as  other  feelings.     No  matter  how  complicated  a 

82 


498    CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

relation  may  be  when  analyzed  logically  or  repre- 
sented by  a  diagram,  it  can  be  treated  in  thought 
as  a  unit,  and  be  felt  as  a  unit.  Relations  may 
become  the  terms  between  which  other  relations 
are  observed,  and  these  higher  relations  may  again 
serve  as  terms.  Were  there  no  unity  in  a  relation, 
did  it  mean  nothing  for  us  apart  from  concrete  terms 
which  must  be  pictured,  this  superposition  of  rela- 
tions upon  relations  would  soon  result  in  an  enor- 
mous complexity  of  consciousness;  whereas,  in 
fact,  consciousness  may  be  as  clean  and  bold  in  its 
design  as  when  it  is  dealing  with  a  few  elementary 
sense  qualities.  The  mind  of  the  mathematician, 
when  he  has  reached  the  later  propositions  of  a  the- 
ory, and  is  deaUng  with  what  turn  out  on  analysis  to 
be  relations  of  relations  of  relations,  is  not  the 
spider's  web  of  feelings  of  relation  that  analysis 
would  lead  us  to  expect.  Without  being  mathe- 
matical, one  still  often  has  occasion  to  deal  with 
relations  of  a  high  order.  My  land,  let  us  suppose, 
has  a  boundary  with  very  unequal  sides  and  angles ; 
my  neighbor's  plot  is  more  nearly  regular.  This 
inequality  in  the  regularity  of  plots  is  characteristic 
of  our  village,  but  is  absent  from  a  neighboring 
village.  This  difference  between  villages  is  much 
more  characteristic  of  this  part  of  the  country  than 
of  certain  others.  The  diversity  of  the  country  in 
this  respect  is  in  marked  contrast  with  its  uniformity 
in  certain  other  respects.  It  thus  becomes  hard 
to  say  how  far  an  observation  made  in  one  part 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  499 

of  the  country  gives  a  fair  sample  of  the  country 
as  a  whole ;  and  this  condition  of  affairs,  which  is 
much  more  pronounced  here  than  in  many  other 
countries,  is  at  times  perplexing  to  a  foreign 
observer.  If  the  reader  will  draw  a  diagram  of 
the  sky-scraper  of  relations  which  makes  up  the 
"condition  of  affairs"  which  perplexes  the  foreign 
observer,  he  will  agree  that  nothing  corresponding 
to  this  analytic  scheme  congested  his  mind  when 
he  thought  the  final  sentence.  On  the  contrary, 
his  consciousness  may  have  been  as  simple  at  the 
end  of  the  course  of  thought  as  at  the  beginning. 
A  relation  may  be  of  any  order  or  power,  and  still 
have  in  consciousness  a  felt  quality  which  is  equally 
simple,  no  matter  what  the  order  of  the  relation. 
The  feelings  of  relations  are  in  fact  of  the  same 
order  as  feelings  of  sensory  qualities.  Each  feeling 
of  relation  is  a  simple  quality. 

Some  hesitation  will  be  felt  about  admitting  feel- 
ings of  relation  to  a  scientific  standing,  for  the 
reason  that  they  are  so  essentially  private ;  it  seems 
impossible  that  we  can  ever  come  to  agreement  re- 
garding them.  As  to  the  feelings  of  the  terras, 
when  these  are  sensible  objects,  it  seems  that  we 
can  experience  them  in  common  and  so  come  to  a 
reasonable  degree  of  agreement.  But  if  there  be 
any  consciousness  additional  to  that  of  the  terms, 
it  would  seem  that  we  could  never  arrive  at  a 
common  understanding  and  a  generally  accepted 


500    CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

description.  The  difficulty  is,  however,  not  quite 
correctly  stated.  We  do  not  know,  indeed,  that  my 
feeling  of  a  certain  relation  is  like  yours,  we  have 
no  means  of  placing  the  two  side  by  side  and  com- 
paring them.  But  this  difficulty  is  not  peculiar  to 
the  feelings  of  relation,  but  holds  of  all  feelings,  of 
all  qualities  of  conscious  experience.  We  do  not 
know  that  my  feeling  of  red  is  of  like  quality  with 
your  feeling  of  red.  We  can  come  to  no  agreement 
regarding  the  sensory  qualities.  What  we  do 
agree  on  is  that  red  is  the  color  of  such  and  such 
objects  —  that  is,  that  these  objects  are  alike  in 
color  —  we  agree  that  red  occurs  also  in  a  certain 
part  of  the  spectrum  and  corresponds  to  light  of  low 
refrangibility ;  we  agree  that  it  is  more  like  orange 
than  yellow,  that  it  is  intermediate  between  orange 
and  purple,  that  it  is  very  different  from  blue-green, 
and  is  complementary  to  it.  In  other  words,  we 
agree  on  the  relations  of  red  —  both  its  time  and 
space  relations  and  its  relations  of  likeness  and 
difference.  We  also  agree,  or  disagree,  as  to  its 
agreeableness,  but  this  again  can  be  defined  only 
in  relation  to  the  effect  on  us  of  other  stimuli.  But 
as  to  its  own  peculiar  quality,  neither  agreement 
or  disagreement  can  be  reached.  What  we  agree 
or  disagree  on  are  exclusively  relations,  never 
qualities  of  feeling.  Thus  the  feelings  of  relation 
suffer  from  no  peculiar  difficulty  in  connection 
with  the  social  sanctions  of  science. 

When  we  wish  to  experience  the  same  sensory 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  501 

quality,  we  let  ourselves  be  affected  by  the  same 
stimulus ;  and  we  apply  this  method  also  when  we 
wish  to  experience  a  relation  in  common.  To  give 
a  child  a  knowledge  of  red  as  we  know  it,  we  place 
before  him  a  red  ball,  a  red  coat,  a  red  toy,  trying 
to  make  the  common  quality  prominent,  and  con- 
trasting it  with  the  blue  color  of  other  things.  Sim- 
ilarly, to  make  him  acquainted  with  our  notion  of 
such  a  relation  as  half,  we  show  him  half  an  apple, 
half  an  orange,  half  a  glass  of  water ;  and  these 
we  contrast  with  whole  things  and  with  fractions 
larger  and  smaller  than  a  half.  Red,  we  tell  him, 
is  what  is  there  now,  and  what  is  different  from 
blue ;  a  half,  too,  is  what  is  there  now,  and  what  is 
different  from  a  whole  or  a  quarter.  We  do  not 
pretend  to  communicate  to  him  the  "what,"  but 
only   its   relations. 

So  again,  if  we  attempt  to  take  scientific  account 
of  mental  imagery,  we  begin,  as  Galton  did,  by 
putting  different  persons  in  the  same  situation. 
"Think  of  your  breakfast- table.  Can  you  see  it 
before  your  mind's  eye  ?  How  does  it  compare 
with  the  actual  sensory  presence,  in  vividness  of 
color,  in  distinctness  of  outline,  in  size,  in  position  ?  " 
I  recently  heard  a  group  of  psychologists  thresh- 
ing out  this  matter  of  imager)',  and  there  was  agree- 
ment between  several  of  them  that  the  image,  as 
they  experienced  it,  was  not  readily  comparable 
with  sensation  in  regard  to  vividness  and  distinct- 
ness.   Their  images,  if  they  should  be  called  such, 


502     CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

seemed  quite  a  different  sort  of  thing  from  sensa- 
tion. Their  thoughts  of  objects  had  a  one  to  one 
correspondence  with  the  objects,  they  were  definite 
in  identifying  them,  and  they  were  workable ;  but 
they  were  incommensurable  with  sensations.  These 
men  were  clearly  talking  throughout  in  terms  of 
relations  —  the  relations  of  the  thought  of  objects 
to  the  sensations  of  objects  and  to  the  dealing  with 
objects.  They  did  not  attempt  to  compare  their 
actual  feelings,  save  as  the  quality  of  the  feeling 
was  indicated  by  the  relations  in  which  it  stood. 
The  same  procedure  can  be  followed  in  comparing 
our  feelings  of  relations.  When,  for  example,  I 
testify  that  the  feeling  which  I  have  in  attending 
to  a  certain  relation  is  sharply  distinguished  from 
sensory  experience,  and  that  it  has  as  much  sim- 
plicity as  any  other  fact  of  consciousness,  you  can 
place  yourself  in  the  same  situation,  and  see 
whether  you  agree  with  me. 

When,  therefore,  we  are  enjoined  to  reduce  all 
conscious  facts  to  sensation,  on  the  ground  that 
we  cannot  possibly  come  to  scientific  agreement 
in  any  other  than  sensory  terms,  those  of  us  who 
smart  under  the  epistemological  whip,  and  wish 
we  could  be  free  to  find  what  we  find,  may  take 
comfort  in  the  reflection  that  the  same  kind  of  agree- 
ment is  possible  regarding  non- sensory  feelings, 
should  such  be  found,  as  regarding  sensations. 
In  both  cases  the  agreement  concerns  the  rela- 
tions of  the  feelings,  not  their  intimate  qualities. 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  503 

This  exclusive  attention  to  relations  is  not  pecu- 
liar to  psycholop^y,  but  is  characteristic  of  all  science. 
Science  deals  with  relations,  not  with  qualities.  We 
conceive  quality  as  inherent  in  a  thing,  relation  as 
transcending  the  thing.  The  clearest  example  of 
quality  is  found  in  consciousness.  A  given  bit  of 
consciousness  is  just  as  it  is ;  its  quality  is  im- 
mediately and  exhaustively  given  in  its  isolated 
existence.  No  more  quality  is  imported  into  it  by 
comparing  it  with  anything  outside  itself.  In  point 
of  quality,  it  is  as  it  is  experienced.  In  point  of 
relation,  however,  it  is  not  as  it  is  experienced.  It 
has  numerous  relations  of  cause  and  effect,  of 
likeness  and  difference,  of  truth  and  value,  which 
can  be  discovered  later,  but  are  not  known  to  it- 
self. What  is  thus  experientially  seen  to  be  true  of 
bits  of  consciousness  is  conceived  as  true  also  of 
external  things.  A  physical  thing  is  thought  of  as 
having  a  quality  of  its  own.^  The  quality  is  imma- 
nent in  the  thing.  A  relation,  on  the  contrary, 
passes  beyond  the  thing;  it  seems  to  have  no  self- 
subsistence,  and  thus  lays  itself  open  to  the  destruc- 
tive criticism  which  has  been  levelled  at  it  for  its 
lack  of  independence.    But  the  same  characteristic 

'  The  quality  of  a  thing  is  to  be  distinguished  from  its  quahties.  Its  qual- 
ity, or  perhaps  better  its  character,  is  im[)erfectly  represented  by  the  sum  of 
its  qualities,  imperfectly  l)ecause  its  quality  covers  the  concomitince  of  the 
particular  quahties  and  their  mutual  relations.  The  quahties  of  an  orange 
fire  its  size,  shape,  weight,  color,  smell,  taste,  structure,  its  origin  and  histor\', 
its  use  and  destiny,  its  cost,  its  resthetic  value,  its  standing  in  jisychology  as 
the  classic  example  of  a  thing.  The  quality  or  character  of  the  orange  includes 
all  of  these  with  their  mutual  dependencies,  and  the  unity  of  the  whole  thing. 


504    CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

makes  it  a  means  of  knowledge.  To  get  knowledge, 
thought  must  move.  Quality  affords  no  vehicle  to 
carry  it;  relation  bears  it  onward.  Hence  science 
deals  with  relations.  A  quality  is  to  science  the 
sign  of  a  problem;  it  is  an  unexplored  country. 
Exploration  dissolves  the  quality  into  relations;  it 
gives  us  a  map,  which  has  indeed  a  quality  of  its 
own,  but  not  the  quality  of  the  country;  but  the 
relations  in  the  map  are  relations  of  the  country. 
As  we  pass  from  a  naive  to  a  scientific  conception 
of  anything  we  leave  qualities  behind  and  come  to 
know  relations.  We  first  think  of  hardness,  for 
example,  as  a  quaUty  residing  in  certain  things; 
but  soon  we  see  that  a  definition  of  hardness  can 
only  be  made  by  observing  the  relations  of  these 
things  to  other  things.  Not  satisfied,  we  try  to 
penetrate  into  the  thing  and  see  why  it  has  these 
relations;  we  come  then  to  conceive  of  hardness 
as  a  mutual  relation  between  the  particles  of  the 
thing,  thus  substituting  inner  relations  for  outer  in 
our  definition  of  the  quality.  The  terms  of  a  relation 
are  for  scientific  thought  unanalyzed  residues ;  so 
far  as  they  retain  any  quality,  they  simply  mark  the 
limit  to  which  science  has  progressed.  That  qual- 
ities are  resolvable  into  relations  is  an  essential 
postulate  of  the  scientific  attitude,  for  as  long  as  a 
quality  remains  simply  a  quality,  no  description 
or  explanation,  no  classification  or  analysis,  has 
occurred.  Qualities  are  not  explanatory  or  dynamic 
in  any  way ;  they  stay  at  home  and  are  essentially 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  505 

private.  They  can  be  contemplated  but  not  treated 
discursively.  They  have  aesthetic  but  not  scientific 
or  practical  value. 

That  every  quality  is  decomposable  into  relations 
is  rather  a  postulate  than  an  axiom ;  on  the  other 
hand,  it  seems  almost  axiomatic  that  every  relation 
constitutes  a  quality.  Two  terms  in  relation  form 
a  group  or  whole,  and  the  relation  constitutes  a 
quality  of  the  whole.  If  a  husband  and  wife  are 
antagonistic,  this  relation  between  them  consti- 
tutes a  quality  of  the  family.  The  quality  is  an 
inarticulate  form  of  the  same  fact  which  is  given 
articulately  in  the  relation. 

The  quality  of  an  object,  as  felt  by  us,  need  not 
tally  wdth  the  quality  of  the  object  itself.  As  felt 
by  us,  the  quality  is  our  own,  and  private  as  qual- 
ities always  are.  We  conceive  the  quality  of  the 
object  as  likewise  private  to  it.  There  seems  to  be 
no  cogent  reason  why  the  felt  quality  in  us  should 
be  a  copy  of  the  quality  of  the  object.  It  is  other- 
wise with  relations,  which  we  believe,  at  any  rate, 
to  be  objective.  No  error  is  introduced  into  our 
thought  if  qualities  of  our  experience  do  not  agree 
with  the  qualities  of  objects ;  while  if  the  relations 
perceived  do  not  tally  with  the  relations  of  the  object, 
we  are  in  error.  A  relation  transcends  the  thought 
that  thinks  it.  But  it  is  not  the  feeling  of  the  rela- 
tion that  is  transcendent,  for  this  feeling,  like  other 
qualities,  is  private.  It  is  hard  to  believe,  when  we 
perceive  one  thing  as  larger  than  another,  or  in  any 


506     CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  RELATIONS 

way  related  to  it,  that  the  relation  perceived  does 
not  hold  objectively ;  but  the  peculiar  feeling  which 
we  experience  in  perceiving  the  relation  need  not 
have  any  existence  apart  from  the  feeling  itself. 
Space  as  a  "form  of  perception,"  if  by  this  is  meant 
a  felt  quality,  may  very  well  be  purely  subjective 
though  spatial  relations  are  objective.  It  is  easier 
to  be  an  idealist  in  regard  to  qualities  than  in 
regard  to  relations.  In  all  this  I  speak  as  a  psy- 
chologist, I  hope,  rather  than  as  a  metaphysician. 
Trying  to  think  yourself  into  the  idealistic  attitude 
I  regard  as  a  psychological  experiment;  and  with 
me  the  experiment  succeeds  pretty  well  as  far  as 
concerns  the  sensory  and  conceived  qualities  of  ob- 
jects, but  not  at  all  as  concerns  their  relations. 

The  feeling  of  a  relation  is  itself  a  quality.  What 
has  been  said  of  the  scientific  value  of  relations 
—  and  what  might  similarly  be  said  of  their  prac- 
tical utility  —  does  not  apply  to  the  feelings  of 
relation.  The  utility  of  the  feelings  of  relation  is 
by  no  means  evident.  The  utility  of  adjusting  our- 
selves to  relations  is  evident  enough,  but  of  what 
use  is  the  particular  feeling  that  we  have  in  the 
process  of  adjustment  ?  The  use  of  any  conscious- 
ness is  hard  to  make  out;  but,  granted  that  con- 
sciousness is  useful  in  a  general  way,  of  what  use 
are  its  special  nuances  ?  I  cannot  fall  back  on  the 
argument  from  utility  in  supporting  my  view  that 
feelings  of  relation  exist  as  independent  facts  of 
consciousness ;  and  this  may  seem  a  decided  weak- 


R.   S.  WOODWORTH  507 

ness  In  the  position.  But  I  should  answer  that  we 
see  the  utihty  of  the  particuhir  qualities  of  sensa- 
tion as  little  as  that  of  the  feelings  of  relation.  That 
red  objects  should  look  different  from  green  ones 
is  useful,  but  what  is  the  utility  of  that  particular 
quality,  red  ?  Any  other  quality  of  feeling  —  save 
perhaps  pleasure  and  pain  —  would  serve  as  well, 
provided  it  presented  the  same  relations  of  time 
and  place,  likeness  and  difference. 

It  is  then  relations,  or  adjustment  to  relations, 
and  not  the  feelings  of  relations,  that  carrv  thought 
forward.  Introspection  reveals  no  more  agency 
in  this  sort  of  feeling  than  in  others.  We  cannot 
couple  together  a  train  of  judgments  by  the  feel- 
ings of  relation  existing  between  their  terms.  We 
cannot  by  examining  the  feelings  find  out  anything 
about  the  subject-matter  to  which  they  refer.  For 
example,  while  mathematics  seems  to  deal  with 
something  inward  rather  than  with  physical  ob- 
jects, yet  it  is  by  no  means  an  introspective  study. 
By  studying  the  feelings  of  the  relations  which  form 
his  subject-matter,  no  mathematician  would  make 
progress  in  his  analysis,  lie  is  dealing  with  rela- 
tions, not  with  the  feelings  of  them.  It  is  not  then 
by  inference  from  their  supposed  effects  or  utility, 
but  only  by  direct  ac(juaintance  with  the  feelings 
themselves,  that  the  knowledge  of  their  existence 
is  reached. 


ON   THE  VARIABILITY  OF  INDIVIDUAL 
JUDGMENT 


ON  THE  VARIABILITY  OF  INDIVIDUAL 
JUDGMENT 

By  Frederic  Lyman  Wells 

IN  the  article  "Statistics  of  American  Psycholo- 
gists "  ^  Professor  Cattejl  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  if  one  endeavors  to  arrange  and  rearrange 
in  serial  order  a  number  of  given  objects,  the  posi- 
tions successively  given  them  will  vary  somewhat 
as  they  would  vary  if  the  arrangements  had  been 
made  one  each  by  different  observers.  If  we  under- 
took to  rearrange  ten  times  a  series  of  grays  in 
order  of  brightness,  we  should  no  more  get  the 
same  order  each  time  than  we  should  get  identical 
orders  from  ten  different  subjects.  Nor  would 
our  own  orders  vary  approximately  the  same 
amount  from  the  average;  sometimes  we  should 
be  better,  sometimes  worse,  judges,  just  as  among 
our  ten  subjects  some  would  be  more  discrimina- 
tive, some  less.  The  judgments  of  the  same  in- 
dividual at  different  times  are  theoretically  quite 
comparable  to  those  of  different  individuals  re- 
gardless of  the  factor  of  time. 

In  this  way  there  may  be  illustrated  a  contin- 
uum between  the  subjective  and  objective  classes 

»  Am.  J.  Psych.,  Vol.  XIV,  320-328. 
511 


512    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

of  judgment.  In  the  case  of  grays,  weights,  or 
lines  we  assume  a  certain  standard  which  we  term 
the  objective  order,  and  which  we  determine 
through  photometry  or  some  analogous  method. 
Because  we  have  such  methods,  we  do  not  need  to 
have  recourse  to  individual  judgments  to  determine 
objective  values,  and  these  individual  judgments 
give  us  a  part  of  the  personal  equation;  the  indi- 
vidual's sensibility  to  light,  weight,  etc.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  have  such  subjective  judgment  as 
preferences  in  sculpture,  painting,  or  music.  In 
the  first  clase  we  may  arrange  individuals  in  pre- 
cise order  for  accuracy  of  discrimination;  in  the 
second,  one  may  with  equally  good  taste  vary  his 
preferences  within  a  considerable  range.  So  far  as 
any  distinction  on  a  statistical  basis  is  possible, 
we  might  consider  as  subjective  those  types  in 
which  the  various  judgments  of  the  individual 
formed  a  species  of  their  own,  varying  from  each 
other  considerably  less  than  from  an  equal  num- 
ber of  judgments  made  by  different  individuals; 
and  consider  as  objective  those  in  which  an  indi- 
vidual would  vary  from  his  own  independent 
judgments  about  as  much  as  the  variation  of  an 
equal  number  of  judgments  by  different  individ- 
uals. For  example,  if  A  and  B  arranged  ten  pieces 
of  music  in  order  of  preference,  the  orders  would 
centre  about  each  individual's  own  standard;  but 
if  A,  B,  C,  D,  etc.,  arranged  ten  graduated  weights, 
the  orders  would  theoretically  all  centre  about  a 


FREDERIC  LYMAN   W^LLS         513 

common  standard,  the  objective  order  of  heavi- 
ness. The  two  categories  would  almost  certainly 
be  continuous.  We  may  first  consider  from  this 
viewpoint  types  of  this  first,  or  highly  subjective, 
class  of  judgments,  and  compare  these  subse- 
quently with  examples  of  a  more  objective  type. 


Experiments  in  Preference 

An  obvious  and  serious  difficulty  with  all  ex- 
periments involving  repeated  judgments  of  the 
same  thing  are  the  factors  of  recognition  and 
memory.  Especially  is  this  true  of  judgments  of 
subjective  preference  with  which  we  are  to  be  here 
concerned.  If  the  subject  remembers  his  previous 
judgments,  he  will  in  spite  of  himself  order  his 
successive  ones  accordingly.  The  only  practicable 
ways  of  meeting  this  difficulty  are  to  make  the 
series  to  be  arranged  as  long  as  possible,  and  to 
allow  as  much  time  as  possible  to  elapse  between 
the  successive  arrangements.  A  certain  homo- 
geneity in  the  series  is  necessary,  and  this  made 
the  selection  of  suitable  material  no  easy  task.  A 
series  of  fifty  colored  souvenir  postal  cards,  to  be 
graded  in  order  of  individual  preference,  was 
finally  decided  upon  as  the  most  practical  ap- 
proach to  the  problem.^    The  cards  were  approved 

*  The  psycholof^ical  possibilities  of  the  souvenir  postal  card  have  l>een  in- 
sufficiently appreciated.  They  afford  an  inexhaustible  mine  of  material  for 
experiments  in  recoj^nition  memory  and  kindred  processes,  for  which  there 
is  no  other  readily  accessible  apjjaratus. 

S3 


514    VARIABILITY  OF  JUDGMENTS 

by  the  writer  from  selections  made  from  the  sam- 
ple books  of  the  Rotograph  Company.  They  are 
all  views  of  natural  scenery,  with  the  works  of 
man  a  subordinate  feature.  In  a  few  cards  these 
last  are  altogether  absent.  The  fifty  cards  were 
arranged  by  the  five  subjects,  A-E,  five  times 
each,  one  week  elapsing  between  each  individual's 
successive  arrangements.  Single  arrangements 
were  also  made  by  five  additional  subjects,  F-J, 
and  these,  combined  with  the  first  arrangements 
of  A-E,  give,  for  comparison,  a  series  of  ten  ar- 
rangements by  different  subjects.  Subjects  A,  B, 
and  C  are  men  of  special  psychological  training, 
D  and  E  are  women  of  moderate  psychological 
training.  Of  the  five  subjects  making  single  ar- 
rangements, all  are  men  of  special,  though  widely 
differing,  psychological  training.  From  these  ex- 
periments are  gathered  the  data  to  be  discussed 
below. 

The  uniform  attitude  of  the  subjects  toward 
the  experiment  was  one  of  lack  of  confidence  in  the 
judgments.  The  time  required  to  make  a  single 
arrangement  varied  from  15  to  45  minutes,  the 
women  taking  as  a  rule  longer  than  the  men,  and 
the  time,  of  course,  decreasing  with  the  successive 
arrangements.  So  far  as  exact  positions  of  the 
cards  were  concerned,  the  subjects  who  made  re- 
peated judgments  reported  complete  oblivescence 
except  now  and  then  with  regard  to  first  or  last 
positions.      Of    course    a   remembered    judgment 


FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS         515 

was  not  necessarily  repeated  nor  were  repeated 
judgments  necessarily  remembered ;  subject  E 
placed  the  same  card  last  in  each  arrangement, 
and  at  the  close  expressed  surprise  at  finding  that 
she  had  done  so.  One  subject  expressed  absolute 
certainty  that  new  cards  were  being  successively 
introduced.  There  was  naturally  subjective  effort 
to  judge  independently  of  previous  arrangements. 
Certain  features  are  to  be  noted  in  the  results  in- 
dicating that  the  memory  difficulty  was  fairly 
satisfactorily  met. 

The  subjoined  Table  I  gives  under  X  the  order, 
average  positions,  and  m.  v.  (not  p.  e.)  of  the 
single  arrangements  by  the  ten  subjects.  Column 
V  is  a  combination  of  the  records  of  subjects  A-E 
which  will  be  described  below.  Table  II  gives 
in  detail  the  results  of  the  five  successive  arrange- 
ments by  each  of  the  subjects  A-E.  To  anyone 
interested  in  the  statistics  of  such  arrangements 
they  will  perhaps  repay  a  more  careful  examination 
than  it  is  possible  to  give  them  here. 

When  the  subjects  made  the  arrangements,  it 
was  customary  to  hesitate  considerably  on  the 
first  few  and  then  to  proceed  at  about  an  equal, 
or  perhaps  slightly  increasing,  rate  to  the  end.  This 
hardly  reflects  the  size  of  the  differences,  which 
are  presumably  greatest  at  the  ends.  It  is  due 
merely  to  a  natural  tendency  to  exercise  greater 
care  at  the  beginning  of  the  experiment.  So  far 
as  the  actual  order  is  concerned  they  cannot  have 


516    VARIABILITY  OF  JUDGMENTS 

TABLE  I 


X  (Results  fob 

Ten  Subjects) 

V  (Av.  OF  Table  U)     \ 

Roto- 

Order. 

graph  Co. 
Serial  No. 

Position. 

M.  V. 

Order. 

Position. 

M.V. 

1 

5442 

12.6 

10.2 

1 

2.6 

1.3 

2 

5511 

13.3 

8.8 

2 

4.0 

2.3 

3 

5353 

13.6 

7.7 

3 

5.8 

3.1 

4 

2460 

14.1 

6.3 

4 

6.8 

2.9 

5 

7384 

15.0 

10.4 

5 

7.4 

3.8 

6 

106  fe 

15.8 

9.6 

6 

8.4 

4.4 

7 

30  a 

16.7 

9.6 

7 

9.6 

6.4 

8 

6151 

17.0 

10.8 

8 

10.2 

2.3 

9 

8708 

17.4 

7.0 

9 

10.6 

2.3 

10 

5521 

17.6 

4.6 

10 

12.0 

5.3 

11 

7118 

18.0 

11.1 

11 

12.8 

4.5 

12 

7198 

19.4 

10.2 

12 

13.4 

5.2 

13 

6236 

20.6 

8.8 

13 

14.0 

5.1 

14 

7196 

21.1 

14.7 

14 

15.0 

5.0 

15 

3893 

21.4 

13.2 

15 

15.8 

7.0 

16 

2012 

22.0 

9.2 

16 

17.6 

6.0 

17 

6182 

22.5 

10.7 

17 

18.6 

5.0 

18 

5626 

22.7 

10.7 

18 

19.2 

5.1 

19 

7570 

23.0 

11.4 

19 

19.8 

6.2 

20 

6976 

23.4 

10.4 

20 

21.0 

6.0 

21 

6156 

23.4 

10.8 

21 

21.6 

6.4 

22 

5560 

23.9 

12.9 

22 

21.8 

4.9 

23 

7125 

24.4 

10.6 

23 

23.0 

5.4 

24 

5710 

24.5 

10.3 

24 

25.0 

5.6 

25 

7171 

25.1 

16.4 

25 

26.0 

7.0 

FREDERIC   LY^IAN  V^^LLS 


517 


T.VBLE   I  — continued 


X  (U 

FSCLTS   FOR 

Tkn  Subjkcts) 

V    (AV.    OF    T.\BLE   11)         1 

lloto- 

Order. 

^'rapli  Co. 

Position. 

M.  V. 

Order. 

Position. 

M.  V. 

ScTVdl  No. 

26 

5871 

26.4 

11.1 

!    '' 

26.8 

4.7 

27 

911 

26.5 

14.1 

27 

27.4 

6.0 

28 

7522 

27.0 

12.2 

28 

28.0 

6.0 

29 

184 

27.0 

16.4 

29 

28.6 

3.9 

30 

16103 

27.4 

10.8      i 

30 

29.2 

4.3 

31 

6264 

27.6 

8.0 

31 

80.0 

6.5 

32 

7170 

28.1 

6.7 

32 

304 

6.2 

33 

5731 

28.8 

8.8 

33 

82.2 

5.0 

34 

5439 

29.1 

12.1 

34 

33.0 

4.8 

85 

7197 

29.3 

9.3 

1 

35 

88.6 

5.8 

36 

8706 

29.6 

8.2 

36 

34.4 

6.8 

37 

5570 

29.9 

14.5 

37 

34.6 

5.0 

38 

25508 

30.2 

11.4 

38 

35.0 

5.0 

39 

6442 

30.3 

10.9       ! 

39 

36.2 

4.8 

40 

6547 

30.4 

9.2 

40 

36.4 

6.0 

41 

5727 

30.5 

16.7 

41 

87.4 

4.8 

42 

8704 

31.0 

11.0 

42 

39.2 

4.0 

43 

2103 

32.6 

12.3 

43 

40.4 

5.8 

44 

6070 

32.7 

13.0 

44 

42.0 

8.5 

45 

697G  a 

34.8 

5.9 

45 

43.2 

8.9 

46 

70-26 

35.5 

8.1 

46 

44.6 

8.0 

47 

2010 

36.6 

8.6 

47 

45.4 

2.0 

48 

5862 

36.6 

10.8      1 

48 

46.6 

2.0 

49 

5800 

38.4 

10.2 

49 

48.0 

1.2 

50 

1285 

43.1 

5.1 

50 

49.6 

0.6 

518    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

TABLE  II 


Or- 
der 

Roto- 
graph  Co. 

Serial  No. 

A 

Roto- 
graph  Co. 
Serial  No. 

B 

Roto- 

Posi- 
tion 

M.V. 

Posi- 
tion 

M.V. 

graph  Co. 
Serial  No. 

1 

5353 

1 

0.0 

7384 

4 

1.8 

6156 

2 

6521 

3 

1.2 

5442 

6 

4.4 

6264 

3 

106  6 

4 

2.0 

2460 

7 

5.2 

5731 

4 

5560 

6 

1.8 

25508 

8 

4.8 

6670 

6 

5511 

7 

3.4 

6151 

9 

3.0 

8704 

6 

6182 

7 

3.8 

2012 

10 

7.6 

2102 

7 

6151 

8 

0.8 

7196 

11 

9.6 

7196 

8 

5442 

8 

2.0 

5560 

12 

2.6 

5511 

9 

6976 

9 

3.4 

5353 

13 

8.4 

7197 

10 

30  o 

12 

4.4 

8708 

14 

9.4 

7198 

11 

5871 

13 

3.6 

7522 

15 

6.2 

16103 

12 

7125 

14 

3.8 

106  6 

15 

9.8 

8708 

13 

7118 

15 

4.8 

6442 

15 

8.8 

5521 

14 

5710 

15 

0.8 

6226 

[  ^^ 

7.6 

5710 

15 

7384 

15 

4.6 

5439 

1  18 

11.2 

6727 

16 

2460 

17 

6.4 

8706 

ri9 

9.4 

5570 

17 

7522 

17 

3.4 

6156 

J  19 

3.4 

184 

18 

j  911 

18 

2.4 

5871 

I  19 

6.2 

7384 

19 

[  6626 

18 

2.2 

2013 

19 

10.0 

5303 

20 

6226 

19 

4.2 

6182 

20 

6.0 

8706 

21 

7570 

20 

1.8 

911 

20 

12.2 

6151 

22 

16103 

20 

5.4 

3893 

21 

6.2 

5442 

23 

6156 

23 

6.0 

309 

21 

12.2 

911 

24 

5731 

26 

2.8 

5710 

25 

4.0 

2013 

25 

1285 

26 

6.4 

6796 

26 

9.0 

106  6 

FREDERIC   LY:\IAN  WELLS 

TABLE  U  — continued 


519 


C 

Roto- 
graph  Co. 
Serial  No. 

i     D 

Roto- 
graph  Co. 
Serial  No. 

E 

Posi- 
tion 

M.  V. 

'  Posi- 
tion 

M.  V. 

Posi- 
tion 

M.  V. 

3 

0.8 

7384 

3 

3.0 

7884 

2 

1.0 

4 

3.4 

5353 

3 

1.2 

5511 

4 

1.2 

6 

1.4 

6976 

6 

3.4 

5442 

6 

3.4 

7 

3.2 

6151 

6 

1.6 

16103 

7 

3.0 

7 

2.8 

5521 

7 

4.8 

5353 

7 

4.8 

9 

4.2 

3893 

8 

3.4 

2460 

8 

3.1 

11 

3.8 

5511 

f  « 

5.2 

5521 

9 

5.6 

■  13 

8.0 

5710 

1» 

5.6 

5676 

9 

4.2 

- 

13 

6.8 

5560 

9 

1.6 

3893 

9 

2.2 

13 

2.4 

6182 

10 

2.0 

6204 

i 

11 

8.4 

14 

4.8 

7125 

10 

2.6 

i 

6226 

12 

5.4 

f,s 

6.0 

2460 

f» 

2.6 

7118 

12 

3.6 

j. 

4.0 

106  6 

I  ^^ 

3.0 

5727 

14 

4.8 

15 

8.2 

30  a 

11 

5.2 

5439 

16 

3.4 

16 

10.2 

7118 

12 

3.6 

6976 

18 

5.6 

18 

6.4 

5442 

15 

3.4 

7198 

19 

4.6 

19 

3.2 

6670 

17 

3.2 

184 

21 

11.8 

20 

8.6 

7570 

18 

2.6 

6442 

21 

5.8 

22 

8.0 

8708 

19 

2.8 

7125 

21 

7.8 

22 

9.6 

6442 

22 

3.4 

106  6 

[  22 

6.6 

23 

9.6 

911 

23 

3.8 

6976  a 

1  22 

4.8 

23 

3.0 

6264 

23 

2.2 

7570 

22 

7.6 

23 

6.8 

6226 

24 

4.0 

6547 

24 

12.8 

24 

9.0 

7522 

25 

5.0 

5862 

25 

7.2 

25 

6.8 

7196 

26 

6.2 

5731   ' 

27 

6.6 

520    VARIABILITY  OF  JUDGMENTS 

TABLE  II  —  continued 


Or- 
der 

Roto- 
graph  Co. 

Serial  No. 

A 

Roto- 
graph  Co. 
Serial  No. 

B 

Roto- 

Posi- 
tion 

M.  V. 

Posi- 
tion 

M.V. 

graph  Co. 
Serial  No. 

96 

7198 

27 

6.2 

7125 

26 

8.4 

6976 

27 

3893 

28 

6.8 

2010 

26 

6.4 

6182 

28 

5570 

28 

3.0 

5862 

27 

10.4 

6226 

29 

7196 

29 

4.0 

718 

28 

5.6 

30  a 

30 

7170 

30 

2.0 

7026 

29 

5.6 

7171 

31 

184 

31 

8.6 

5321 

29 

4.2 

7170 

32 

6264 

32 

3.2 

1285 

29 

9.2 

5871 

33 

6547 

34 

3.4 

7198 

31 

8.6 

5560 

34 

7197 

34 

2.4 

8704 

32 

5.8 

7570 

35 

5439 

35 

6.8 

6264 

32 

6.0 

6547 

36 

7171 

36 

4.2 

7170 

32 

7.8 

2010 

37 

8704 

36 

3.2 

5511 

33 

3.0 

2460 

38 

8708 

36 

2.8 

5626 

34 

5.2 

5626 

39 

2012 

37 

5.2 

16103 

35 

4.2 

7522 

40 

5727 

37 

4.8 

6976  a 

35 

8.6 

3983 

41 

6976  a 

38 

5.6 

5370 

35 

8.2 

25508 

42 

6670 

40 

3.6 

6547 

38 

4.4 

5439 

43 

8706 

41 

4.4 

5727 

38 

8.8 

1285 

44 

25508 

44 

1.4 

5731 

41 

6.0 

7125 

45 

6442 

45 

2.2 

7170 

42 

3.4 

7118 

46 

5862 

45 

0.8 

5860 

44 

3.6 

6976  o 

47 

2013 

46 

2.0 

6670 

45 

1.0 

7026 

48 

7026 

47 

1.2 

184 

48 

1.2 

6442 

49 

2010 

48 

1.2 

7171 

49 

1.0 

5862 

50 

5860 

50 

0.0 

7197 

49 

1.6 

5860 

Tl 

le  positions 

are  give 

n  to  the 

nearest  pos 

tive  intt 

;ger  only 

;  the  orders 

FREDERIC   LYMAN  WELLS 

TABLE  11  — concliukd 


521 


c 

Roto- 
grapli  Co. 
Serial  No. 

D 

Roto- 
grapli  Co. 
Serial  No. 

^       1 

Po.si- 
tion 

M.  V. 

Posi- 
tion 

M.  V. 

Posi- 
tion 

M.  V. 

27 

3.0 

25508 

(  27 

3.6 

2012 

27 

2.2 

28 

5.2 

5439 

U 

4.6 

30  o 

28 

7.0 

28 

4.2 

5871 

28 

4.8 

5710 

29 

7.6 

29 

5.6 

5626 

j  28 

2.2 

7197 

29 

2.2 

29 

4.8 

6156 

[  28 

4.2 

7170 

30 

6.0 

30 

8.8 

7198 

29 

2.4 

8708 

81 

8.6 

30 

5.6 

7170 

29 

4.2 

7196 

32 

9.0 

31 

7.0 

6976  a 

32 

2.6 

6182 

33 

3.2 

32 

6.4 

16103 

34 

1.4 

6151 

S3 

8.2 

32 

9.8 

2012 

36 

2.0 

8706 

83 

4.6 

33 

8.4 

7197 

r  37 

5.6 

5860 

34 

8.0 

33 

8.8 

5862 

1  37 

2.4 

0070 

34 

7.4 

'  33 

9.4 

5860 

37 

1.8 

7026 

35 

5.6 

■ 

33 

9.6 

2013 

40 

1.6 

5871 

36 

3.6 

.  33 

10.6 

2010 

40 

1.4 

25508 

37 

4.4 

36 

3.4 

5727 

41 

2.8 

5500 

37 

3.8 

39 

4.6 

7026 

42 

2.4 

7171 

37 

5.2 

40 

7.2 

5731 

43 

2.6 

911 

40 

5.8 

41 

2.0 

5570 

44 

2.6 

2010 

40 

5.6 

42 

5.2 

6547 

45 

0.6 

2013 

42 

8.2 

45 

3.0 

8704 

46 

3.2 

8704 

'  43 

4.4 

47 

0.8 

7171 

40 

2.6 

7522 

43 

3.6 

'  47 

3.0 

8706 

47 

1.6 

6156 

44 

3.2 

I" 

2.2 

184 

48 

0.8 

5570 

48 

0.8 

50 

0.0 

1 285 

49 

1.0 

1285 

50 

0.0 

arc  correct  to  a  smaller  scale,  eciual  positions  being  indicated  by  brackets. 


522    VARIABILITY  OF  JUDGMENTS 

much  bearing  upon  the  experimental  study  of  aesthet- 
ics, because  the  material  would  be  too  diflScult  to 
standardize  for  this  purpose.  Certain  of  the  cards 
necessarily  fall  into  groups  through  similarity  of 
subject  or  color  scheme,  and  these  tend  to  keep 
rather  together  in  position,  also  through  the  fact 
that  they  tend  to  become  associated  in  memory. 
So  far  as  establishing  any  objective  basis  for  criteria 
of  preferability  is  concerned,  the  results  seem  to  me 
almost  entirely  negative. 

It  will  perhaps  be  easier  to  consider  in  some 
detail  the  figures  in  Table  I  as  a  preliminary  to 
the  special  results  of  the  repeated  arrangements 
in  Table  II.  Column  X  presents  almost  a  chaos 
of  variability,  the  extreme  range  barely  covering 
30  places,  with  one  exception  only  26.  The  m.  v.'s 
average  nearly  11  places  and  range  from  the  least 
variable  card  with  an  m.  v.  of  4.6  to  the  most  vari- 
able with  an  m.  v.  of  16.7  over  an  approximately 
normal  distribution  as  follows: 


Variation 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

No.  cases 

2 

2 

1 

5 

7 

8 

IS 

3 

8 

2 

1 

2 

1 

Among  the  individual  variations  there  are  many 
above  25,  the  highest  being  32.  Card  2460,  in 
which  this  variation  occurs,  has  an  average  posi- 
tion of  33,  and  the  individual  places  assigned  to  it 
by  the  ten  subjects  are  respectively  42,  1,  40,  37, 
43,  2,  42,  42,  41.  A  card  graded  first  by  one  sub- 
ject was  in  two  cases  graded  last  by  another ;  in  a 
third,  next  to  the  last.     One  of  the  former  is  the 


FREDERIC   LY^IAN   ^^^LLS         523 

most  variable  card,  5727,  and  its  grades  are 
respectively  48,  44,  1,  43,  G,  48,  24,  33,  8,  50.  The 
grades  of  the  least  variable  card,  5521,  are  2,  32, 
17,  14,  20,  20,  15,  18,  20,  18;  position  17.6.  Any- 
one acquainted  with  the  meaning  of  such  figures 
as  those  given  above  must  recognize  the  futility 
of  attempting  to  evolve  from  them  an  order  of  any 
objective  value. 

This  is  much  modified  in  the  repeated  arrange- 
ments by  the  same  subject.  It  v>as  noted  above, 
that  in  objective  judgments,  as  of  weights,  we 
should,  theoretically,  vary  as  much  from  our- 
selves as  other  people  varied  from  each  other,  and 
from  the  comparison  of  these  two  variabilities 
might  be  deduced  the  degree  of  objectivity  of  the 
judgments.  In  the  repeated  arrangements  it  is 
at  once  evident  that  the  range  is  much  greater 
and  the  variability  smaller.  A  table  most  com- 
parable to  X  is  given  under  V,  which  is  computed 
as  follows*  Subject  A's  best  card,  as  will  be  seen 
from  Table  II,  receives  an  average  of  1,  B's  an 
average  of  4,  C's  3,  D's  3,  and  E's  2.  Thus  the 
average  position  of  the  best  card  of  the  five  repeated 
judgments  by  five  su])jects  is  2.6,  and  the  average 
of  the  respective  m.  v.'s  is  1.3,  as  opposed  to  12.6 
and  10.2  for  individual  judgments  by  ten  sul)jects. 
The  figures  for  last  position  are  seen  to  be  49.6 
and  .6  as  against  43.1  and  5.1.  Of  course  the 
extreme  positions  might  unduly  favor  the  repeated 
judgments  in  this  respect.     But  the  figures  for  the 


524    VARIABILITY  OF  JUDGMENTS 


middle  five  judgments  are  respectively  24.6  and 
5.7  as  against  25.6  and  12.4.  Table  III  below 
gives  a  basis  for  a  more  complete  comparison  of 
the  two  variabilities.  Each  series  in  Table  II 
contains  50  average  judgments,  consequently  50 
m.  v.'s  in  all.  These  have  been  divided  into  10 
consecutive  groups  of  5  each.  Thus  under  1-5  and 
opposite  A  we  find  1.7,  which  is  the  average  of  the 
m.  v.'s  of  the  five  cards  which  stood  highest  as  a 
result  of  A's  five  consecutive  arrangements.  Un- 
der 15-20  and  opposite  D  is  3.1,  the  average  m.  v. 
of  cards  16-20  from  the  series  of  five  arrangements 
by  D,  etc.  Opposite  Av.  are  given  the  averages 
of  the  five  subjects  for  each  set  of  five  consecu- 
tive positions.  At  the  bottom  are  given  the  aver- 
age m.  v.'s  for  the  various  groups  of  positions  as 
assigned  by  the  ten  subjects. 

TABLE  III 

Average  M.  V.  for  each  set  of  Five  Consecutive  Positions 

Positions 


Subject 

1-5 

5-10 

10-15 

15-20 

20-25 

25-30 

30-35 

35-40 

40-45 

45-50 

A 

1.7 

2.9 

3.5 

3.7 

4.5 

4.4 

4.9 

4.0 

3.4 

1.0 

B 

3.8 

7.5 

8.7 

7.0 

8.7 

7.3 

6.8 

5.8 

6.2 

1.7 

C 

2.3 

5.0 

6.6 

7.2 

7.0 

4.6 

7.5 

9.8 

4.5 

1.8 

D 

2.8 

3.6 

3.4 

3.1 

4.2 

3.9 

2.5 

2.6 

2.2 

1.9 

E 

2.7 

4.7 

4.6 

7.3 

7.8 

4.8 

6.7 

4.8 

5.7 

2.4 

Av. 

2.6 

4.7 

5.4 

5.7 

6.4 

5.0 

5.7 

5.4 

4.4 

1.8 

Ten 
subjects 

8.7 

8.3 

11.6 

10.5 

12.2 

12.9 

10 

10.8 

11.8 

8.5 

FREDERIC  LYMAN   W^LLS         5^5 

In  examining  the  portion  of  this  table  dealing 
with  the  repeated  arrangements  we  find,  as  we 
should  anticipate,  that  the  m.  v.  increases  toward 
the  middle  positions  and  decreases  toward  the 
ends.  The  amount  of  this  increase  varies  consider- 
ably, and  constitutes  a  not  uninteresting  point  of 
individual  difference.  In  subject  A  the  middle 
m.  v.'s  are  nearly  three  times  those  at  the  start; 
in  D  they  are  barely  half  again  as  much.  Indi- 
vidual difference  in  reliability  of  judgment  seems 
therefore  to  be  greater  in  the  middle  than  at  the 
ends.  This  is  what  we  should  expect,  for  the 
judgments  are  more  difficult  in  the  middle,  and  we 
naturally  vary  more  from  each  other  in  our  judg- 
ment of  difiicult  things  than  in  our  judgment  of 
easy  ones.  Another  point  of  significance  is  that 
the  m.  v.'s  are  always  less  at  the  disliked  than  at 
the  preferred  end,  although  there  is  no  intrinsic 
reason  why  they  should  be  better  grounded  in 
memorv.  This  might  be  in  part  due  to  a  generally 
unaesthetic  series  of  cards,  but  it  is  perhaps  gen- 
erally true  that  we  are  surer  of  our  antipathies  than 
of  our  preferences. 

In  the  m.  v.'s  of  the  ten  subjects  the  most  strik- 
ing appearance  beyond  their  greater  size  is  that 
the  increase  in  the  middle  and  the  decrease  at  the 
ends  is  not  nearly  so  well  marked  as  in  the  repeated 
arrangements.  This  is  precisely  the  condition 
that  the  memory  factor  in  the  repeated  arrange- 
ments would  give,  but  under  Table  IV  will  be  cited 


5m    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

reasons  against  its  being  due  to  this  cause.  It  is 
also  to  be  noted  that  here  the  m.  v.'s  of  the  dis- 
Hked  end  are  not  smaller  than  those  of  the  pre- 
ferred, though  the  difference  is  insignificant. 

The  m.  v.'s  of  the  repeated  arrangements  of 
subjects  A-E  are  shown  according  to  series  in 
Table  IV  a. 

TABLE  IV  a 

Comparative  Variability  of  the  Individual  Series 


Subject 

Series 

Av. 

I 

II 

III 

IV 

V 

A 

4.95 

3.04 

3.08 

2.98 

3.08 

3.43 

B 

6.82 

6.06 

4.82 

6.30 

7.54 

6.21 

C 

6.64 

4.84 

5.00 

6.88 

4.72 

5.61 

D 

3.88 

3.26 

2.58 

2.76 

2.80 

3.06 

E 

6.72 

4.78 

5.06 

4.48 

4.62 

5.13 

Thus  under  I-A  we  find  4.95,  which  is  the  aver- 
age variation  of  the  judgments  made  in  A's  first 
arrangement  from  the  average  of  the  five  arrange- 
ments made  by  him;  3.04  is  the  variation  of  his 
second  arrangement,  etc.  Through  this  table  we 
can  determine  what  arrangement,  if  any,  tends  to 
be  the  most  accurate.  In  subject  A  the  fourth  is 
the  most  accurate  (av.  m.  v.  2.98),  in  subject  B 
the  third,  C  the  fifth,  D  the  third,  E  the  fourth. 
Now  assuming  any  considerable  operation  of  the 
memory  factor  in  these  experiments,  one  of  two 


FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS         527 

things  should  result.  Either  the  first  judgment 
should  set  the  standard  from  which  the  successive 
arrangements  would  vary  more  or  less,  or,  as  the 
memory  of  previous  judgment  accumulates,  each 
successive  judgment  would  become  more  and  more 
the  sum  of  the  preceding  arrangements,  and  the 
m.  V.  would  progressively  decrease.  The  latter 
event  seems  to  the  ^\Tite^  the  more  likely,  but 
neither  is  recorded  in  the  figures,  save  in  so  far  as 
the  first  judgment  tends  to  be  a  relatively  inaccu- 
rate one.  It  is  difficult  to  see  in  what  way  the 
relative  accuracy  of  the  successive  judgments  is 
distributed  differently  from  what  it  might  be  if  the 
successive  arrangements  had  been  made  by  differ- 
ent individuals.  They  seem  to  be  quite  as  inde- 
pendent of  one  another. 

Whatever  the  effect  of  the  memory  factor  upon 
the  successive  series  of  judgments,  those  at  the 
ends  should  be  most  susceptible  to  it,  those  in 
the  middle  least.  The  proper  procedure  is,  then, 
to  examine  the  variability  in  the  succeeding  series 
according  to  the  position  of  the  cards,  and  to  note 
if  there  is  any  difference  in  the  variability  of  the 
successive  series  according  as  the  positions  are 
high,  intermediate,  or  low.  Table  IV  b  gives  for 
each  subject  the  variability  of  the  first  five,  the 
middle  five,  and  the  last  five  positions,  in  each  of 
the  successive  series.  No  significant  difference 
appears  in  the  relative  size  of  the  variabilities  of 
the  middle  and  end  cards,  according  as   the  sue- 


528    VARIABILITY  OF  JUDGMENTS 

TABLE  IV  6 


Position  1-5 

I 

II 

III 

IV 

V 

A 

1.8 

1.0 

2.2 

1.0 

2.4 

B 

3.4 

3.4 

3.6 

5.2 

3.6 

C 

2.2 

1.8 

1.2 

2.8 

2.6 

D 

5.0 

2.0 

2.4 

2.0 

2.0 

E 

2.4 

1.4 

3.2 

4.2 

2.4 

Av. 

3.0 

1.9 

2.7 

3.1 

2.6 

Position  23-27 

A 

7.8 

4.8 

6.8 

3.6 

4.2 

B 

8.8 

11.6 

6.2 

4.0 

6.8 

C 

8.8 

4.6 

7.4 

7.4 

4.6 

D 

4.4 

4.0 

4.0 

5.4 

5.2 

E 

11.0 

5.2 

6.6 

6.4 

10.6 

Av. 

8.2 

6.0 

6.2 

5.4 

6.3 

Position  46-50 

A 

1.4 

0.8 

1.6 

0.6 

0.8 

B 

2.2 

1.4 

1.4 

1.8 

1.6 

C 

1.0 

1.6 

1.6 

0.6 

1.6 

D 

2.8 

2.4 

1.6 

1.0 

2.2    • 

E 

2.4 

5.0 

1.8 

0.8 

2.0 

Av. 

2.0 

1.3 

1.6 

1.0 

1.6 

FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS         529 

cessive  series  are  reached.  If  memory  has  oper- 
ated at  all,  it  must  have  operated  in  positions  1-5 
and  46-50;  from  positions  23-27  it  is  practically 
excluded.  As  there  is  nothin<^  save  consistent 
differences  in  size  to  distinguish  them,  it  seems 
justifiable  to  infer  that  memory  has  in  no  way 
made  the  end  judgments  less  independent  than 
the  middle  ones.  For  this  reason  also,  some  other 
explanation  must  be  assigned  to  the  fact  that  the 
m.  v.'s  of  the  middle  and  end  positions  in  the 
repeated  arrangements  are  more  different  than 
those  of  the  analogous  positions  in  the  individual 
arrangements  by  the  ten  subjects. 

In  the  last  column  of  Table  IV  a  are  given  the 
averages  of  the  m.  v.'s  of  each  series,  the  total 
variability  of  the  five  successive  series  for  each  sub- 
ject. There  is  here  a  difference  of  about  2:1,  B 
varying  the  most  from  his  own  judgments  with 
6.21,  D  the  least  with  3.06.  The  average  of  all  the 
variabilities  is  4.7.  Following  are  the  variations  of 
each  of  the  ten  subjects  from  their  average: 

TABLE  V 

A        B  C        D         E  F  G        n        I         J        Av. 

9.34    10.94    12.98    8.68     11.54     10.54     12.46     9.32     9.12     9.34     10.48 

A  somewhat  significant  comparison  is  aft'orded 
between  the  variabihty  of  subjects  A-E  from  the 
average  of  the  ten,  and  their  variation  from  their 
own  judgments  as  given  in  Table  IV  a.  Those 
who   vary   least   from   their   own   judgments   also 

34 


530    VARIABILITY  OF  JUDGMENTS 

vary  least  from  the  judgments  of  others.  Thus 
D,  whose  preferences  are  the  most  consistent  with 
her  own,  also  agrees  best  with  the  judgment  of 
others.  A  is  next  in  both  (among  subjects  A-E), 
and  the  entire  orders  agree  with  20  per  cent  of  dis- 
placement. The  observations  are  too  few  to  do 
more  than  suggest  a  general  principle,  but  their 
interpretation  is  a  rather  interesting  one.  The 
critic  who  best  knows  his  own  mind  would  seem 
the  best  criterion  of  the  judgments  of  others.  I 
have  elsewhere  argued,  mainly  on  theoretical 
grounds,  against  the  validity  of  accepting  the  ac- 
cordance of  a  judgment  as  indicative  of  its  accu- 
racy, but  figures  like  the  above  are  an  empirical 
demonstration  in  its  favor.  This  matter  will  be 
recurred  to  towards  the  close  of  this  paper. 

With  respect  to  such  judgments  as  those  with 
which  we  are  dealing,  the  variability  of  different 
individuals  is  seen  to  be  more  than  twice  as  great 
as  the  variability  of  different  judgments  by  the 
same  individual.  Each  individual's  judgments 
form  a  distinct  species  of  their  own,  and  the  opin- 
ions expressed  are  thus  in  a  high  degree  personal 
and  subjective. 

Brief  attention  may  be  called  to  the  character 
of  the  individual  variations  themselves.  The  dis- 
tribution of  the  m.  v.'s  for  the  averages  of  the  ten 
subjects  has  already  been  given.  For  the  five  con- 
secutive judgments  of  subjects  A-E,  the  m.  v.'s 
are  distributed  as  follows: 


FREDERIC   LY]VIAN   W'ELLS 


531 


TABLE  M. 

DlBTKIBtmON   OF  THE   Me.4JJ   VARIATIONS  OF   EACH   StTBJECT 


Sub- 
ject 

A 
B 
0 
D 
E 

Vari- 
ation 

No.  cases 

0J5 

_L 
'  Y ' 

li2 

...2 

V 

1 

1.5  2 

2    8 

2.5 

2 
1 

1 
9 

3  3.S 

1 

5  6 

*'   1 

6  1 
S,  3 

6     5 

1 

4  4.5  5 

5  3,2 
5     1  '2 
3     3    2 

3  3    3 

4  5      3 

5.5 

1 
3 

2 
2 
6 

6 
4 

2 

1 

6.5 

V 

2 

7 

2 
3 

75  8 

3    3 

..4 
.  .  .  . 
2    3 

8.5 

1 

4 
3 

9  9.5  10 

1    1 

10.5  U  11.5 

1 

12 

12.S 

3 

2 
3 

2 

2   .. 
..   4 
6    7 
.  .  3 

4    3    3 
1'  5    2 

.  .^  .  .^. 
1    

1 

1 

1 

2 

1 

There  is  a  siigfi^estion  of  species  in  the  distribu- 
tions for  subjects  B  and  C,  as  though  there  were  a 
type  of  card  in  which  the  judgments  were  hkely 
to  vary  more  than  in  others.  The  remainder  do 
not  show  this  characteristic.  The  largest  single 
mean  variation  is  12.8,  made  by  subject  E  on  card 
6264,  which  stands  31st  in  this  subject's  series. 
The  zero  cases  are  from  first  and  last  places,  with 
one  exception  presumably  remembered  from  time 
to  time. 

Following  are  the  distributions  of  the  individual 
variations  in  the  successive  judgments.     They  are 

TABLE    MI 

Distribution  of  the  Single  Variations 


Vari- 
ation 


O'l 

!  i 


2    314:5 


Nocasci    28  5ti  43  30  23  20 

113  32  27  20  18  23 


6  I  7  ,  8  '  9    10  11  12  13  14  15  16:17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  ! 


191  5  9!  r.  .12'.  .i. .:  ij  r  1 

15  22  14  12  12  9    5    7    3    5    4 


1 14  28  35  16  18  26  17  12  10  15  10  7  ;  8  ,  6  5  4  3 

'    '         '     '     •         '     I    :     I    I    ; 
26  47  47  36  23  18  21  12    5    3    2    1...  .'.  .  .  .  .  . 


21  31  22  27  30  16  23,18  10  10    46,4    3,24    2ljl 


I     I     I 


i     I 


ordinarv'  skew  distributions    with   no  striking  fea- 
tures.   The  variability  of  the  single  judgment  seems 


532    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 


to  be  distributed  practically  according  to  chance, 
limited,  of  course,  at  the  small  end. 

In  a  previous  study  ^  attention  was  called  to  the 
fact  that  in  many  consecutive  orders  the  difference 
in  position  as  indicated  by  the  average  did  not 
bear  a  very  strict  relation  to  the  reliability  of  the 
judgments  as  given  in  the  probable  error.  Small 
differences  might  exist  side  by  side  with  small 
p.  e.'s,  and  large  differences  with  large  p.  e.'s.  On 
account  of  the  lack  of  material  for  empirical  analy- 
sis the  question  was  merely  indicated,  but  an 
examination  of  the  longer  ranges  obtained  in  the 
present  experiment  indicates  that  the  difference 
between  any  two  consecutive  positions  is  not  given 
in  the  averages  and  p.  e.'s  or  even  in  the  entire 
distributions,  but  that  some  refinement  of  the 
treatment  is  necessary.^ 

^  "A  Statistical  Study  of  Literary  Merit,"  Archives  of  Psychology,  No.  7, 
pp.  17-19. 

^  The  actual  relationships  between  the  probable  error  and  the  average 
difference  in  consecutive  positions  have  been  calculated  by  the  Pearson  and 
Woodworth  methods.  The  relationships  are  naturally  negative,  though  not 
so  much  so  as  they  might  be,  the  figures  being  as  follows : 

TABLE  VIII 
Relationship  of  P.  E.  and  A.  D.  P. 


Subject 

W 

P 

A 

57 

-15 

B 

51 

-30 

C 

75 

-60 

D 

53 

-33 

E 

64 

-41 

(Note  that  under  W  a  figure  above  50  indicates  negative  correlation,) 


FREDERIC   LY:\IAX   WELLS 


533 


Let  us  consider  more  in  detail  the  followinir 
portion  of  our  results,  positions  ^21-'-25  in  the  records 
of  subject  E.  The  grades  here  assi^^ned  to  the 
cards  in  ;21.st-^5th  positions  with  their  averages 
and  m.  v.'s  are  as  follows  : 

TABLE   IX 


21 

30 

19 

'■25 

14 

20 

21.6 

4.8 

22 

33 

U 

18 

30 

IJ 

22.0 

7.6 

23 

13 

17 

42 

8 

38 

23.6 

12.8 

24 

9 

29 

24 

25 

40 

25.4 

7.2 

25 

28 

21 

16 

39 

30 

26.8 

6.6 

The  weakness  of  the  unsupported  average  and 
probable  error  as  measures  of  the  difl'erence  })e- 
tween  two  consecutive  objects  lies  in  the  fact  that 
they  take  no  account  of  the  coincidence  of  the 
grades  which  form  them,  and  which  ought  to  be 
a  most  important  factor  in  the  situation.  Sup|)ose, 
for  example,  we  wish  to  determine  E's  attitude 
toward  the  cards  whose  averages  place  them  ^.'id 
and  23d  on  the  list.  Out  of  the  hve  judgments 
we  see  that  in  three  cases,  in  two  of  a  considerable 
margin,  "iZ  was  preferred  over  !21,  and  only  the 
extreme  fourth  case  gives  it  a  slightly  lower  })lace. 
So  much  is  not  fully  indicated  in  the  m.  v.  The 
point  is  perhaps  l)etter  illustrated  in  positions  :2-4 
and  25.  In  series  I  and  IV  there  is  extreme  prefer- 
ence, outside  the  limits  of  the  m.  v.'s  for  24  over 
25,   and  the  remainders  show  an  almost  ec^ually 


534    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

certain  preference  for  the  lower  over  the  higher. 
The  two  cards  need  not  really  be  close  together  at 
all;  only  now  is  one  markedly  preferred,  now 
another.  We  can  get  a  very  different  situation 
without  altering  average  or  m.  v.  in  the  slightest, 
Suppose  the  coincidence  of  these  grades  had  been 

24 


85 


9 

29 

24 

25 

40 

16 

30 

21 

28 

39 

We  could  then,  perhaps,  say  with  more  confidence 
that  24  was  preferred  over  25.  At  any  rate,  the 
two  results  would  have  very  different  meanings, 
no  difference  appearing  in  the  average  or  p.  e., 
which  are  necessarily  the  same  throughout. 

In  two  consecutive  positions  from  a  series  with 
much  smaller  probable  errors  the  actual  coinci- 
dence of  the  grades  was  as  follows: 

Av.  M.  V. 

A...8559622152  31  46274457    4.5   1.7 
B... 7342367445  10  5  10  5563671    5.1   1.2 

There  is  .6  place  difference  in  position  and  the 
p.  e.'s  of  the  averages  do  not  overlap ;  yet  in  half 
the  cases  the  lower  position  receives  a  higher  grade 
than  the  higher.  The  grades  cannot  be  rearranged 
so  that  this  happens  in  more  than  twelve  cases, 
they  can  be  rearranged  so  that  it  happens  in  only 
three.  The  average  and  p.  e.  give  no  hint  as  to 
the  nature  of  the  coincidences,  and  their  meaning 
is  perhaps  sufficient  to  warrant  some  special 
figure  to  express  it. 


FREDERIC   LYINIAN   ^VELLS         535 

Experiments  on  Color  Vision 

The  apparatus  used  in  these  experiments^  con- 
sisted of  a  series  of  28  cards  upon  which  were  fixed, 
side  by  side,  two  silk  skeins  of  differing  colors. 
The  colors  were  numbered  2,  4,  G,  8,  etc.,  and  the 
first  card,  known  as  2-4,  bore  colors  2  and  4, 
the  next  4  and  G,  and  so  on  up  to  54-5G,  when  the 
next  bore  56  and  then  again  the  first  color,  2.  The 
colors  thus  ran  through  a  complete  circle,  starting 
at  the  reds,  and  running  through  the  yellows, 
greens,  and  purples  back  again  to  the  reds.  It 
was  not  attempted  to  have  the  series  consist  of 
saturated  colors.  The  steps  between  the  colors 
composing  the  pairs  are  not  equal  for  sensation, 
and  the  original  object  of  the  experiment  was  to 
determine  whether  measurement  by  relative  posi- 
tion would  afford  a  means  for  stating  the  differ- 
ences between  the  steps  in  a  workable  statistical 
form.  Certain  of  the  results  are,  however,  ger- 
mane to  the  present  subject.  The  procedure  was 
to  have  the  subject  arrange  the  pairs  in  order  of 
the  degree  of  their  differences,  the  pair  which 
differed  least  being  counted  1,  the  next  nearest  as 
2,  the  most  dissimilar  pair  receiving  a  grade  of  28. 
Arrangements  were  obtained  from  ten  subjects, 
the  order,  positions,  and  mean  variations  being 
as  follows : 

'  This  niatcrial  was  l)oing  employed  in  a  study  of  the  quantitative  meas- 
urement of  color  [KTcefition  hy  Miss  MiMrcd  Foclit  of  Coluinhia  University, 
who  kindly  loaned  it  to  me  for  the  purjwse  of  these  exjjerimcnts. 


536    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

TABLE  X 


1 

26-28 

2.6 

1.6 

2 

44-46 

3.3 

2.3 

3 

40-42 

4.8 

3.4 

4 

56-2 

5.0 

0.9 

5 

10-12 

5.9 

2.7 

6 

52-54 

7.0 

2.2 

7 

16-18 

7.0 

3.6 

8 

22-24 

7.5 

1.9 

9 

54-56 

9.0 

2.0 

10 

36-38 

11.7 

2.3 

11 

20-22 

11.8 

3.0 

12 

28-30 

11.8 

5.5 

13 

46-48 

12.1 

2.3 

14 

4-6 

13.5 

2.5 

15 

50-52 

16.0 

3.8 

16 

38-40 

16.2 

3.8 

17 

48-50 

17.0 

2.2 

18 

18-20 

17.4 

4.6 

19 

8-10 

17.7 

2.9 

20 

30-32 

19.1 

3.7 

21 

34-36 

19.5 

3.5 

22 

2-4 

21.7 

2.3 

23 

32-34 

23.0 

2.6 

24 

12-14 

23.1 

1.1 

25 

6-8 

24.6 

1.6 

26 

42-44 

25.2 

0.4 

27 

14-16 

26.6 

0.6 

28 

24-26 

27.9 

0.1 

FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS 


537 


Color  vision  being  something  more  objective 
than  preference  for  souvenir  postal  cards,  we  find 
that  the  variability  of  the  judgments  is  nmch 
smaller,  the  average  m.  v.  of  ten  individuals  for  50 
postal  cards  being  10.8,  and  for  estimations  of  the 
color  differences  but  2.4.  The  individual  varia- 
tions of  each  subject  are  distributed  as  follows : 

TABLE   XI 


Variation 

Subject 

0 

1 

2 
6 

3 

7 

4 
3 

5 

C 

1 

8 

9 

1 

10 

2 

11 

12 

13 

14 

A 

3 

5 

B 

6 

8 

4 

2 

1 

1 

1 

2 

C 

6 

6 

9 

2 

2 

1 

1 

1 

D 

4 

6 

2 

4 

3 

3 

2 

1 

2 

1 

E 

4 

f*f 
1 

5 

7 

1 

2 

2 

F 

5 

10 

5 

3 

4 

1 

G 

8 

8 

4 

2 

4 

1 

1 

H 

5 

6 

6 

2 

6 

2 

.  . 

1 

1 

5 

7 

6 

' 

a 

1 

1 

J 

4 

6 

8 

1 

1 

2 

1 

1 

2 

1 

' 

1 

Total 

.-■jo 

09 

55 

3G 

23 

14  '  9      G 

1 

4 

5 

4 

1 

1 

There  are  six  cases,  two  for  A,  one  for  (\  and 
three  for  J,  in  which  a  })air  is  })laced  in  a  {)osition 
differing  from  the  average  by  more  than  three 
times  the  m.  v.     If  such  cases  as  these  are  not  due 


538    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

to  chance,  they  demonstrate  individual  differences 
in  color  vision  similar  to  those  obtained  in  Hen- 
mon's  experiments/  To  make  a  rough  determina- 
tion of  how  far  they  might  be  due  to  chance,  seven 
of  the  subjects  arranged  the  series  once  more. 
These  included  subjects  C  and  J,  but  it  was  unfor- 
tunately impossible  to  obtain  another  record  from  A. 
All  of  the  divergences  appear  explicable  as  a  result 
of  chance.  However,  in  calculating  the  m.  v.'s  of 
each  subject  in  the  two  successive  arrangements, 
the  m.  v.'s  of  each  subject  from  his  own  judgment 
were  considerably  smaller  than  the  mean  of  his 
variations  from  other  subjects,  the  figures  being 
as  follows : 


TABLE 

XII 

Subject 

C         D 

E 

G 

H 

I 

J 

Av.  var.  2  succ.  j.     . 

0.89      1.8 

1.7 

0.98 

1.5 

1.3 

1.8 

Av.  var.  j.  6  oth.  ind. 

2.3       3.3 

2.3 

1.7 

2.4 

2.3 

3.2 

There  is  still  evidence  of  separate  species  in  the 
judgments  of  each  subject.  The  peculiar  corre- 
spondence above  noted  between  the  amount  of 
variation  from  one's  own  judgment  and  from  the 
judgment  of  others  appears  here  as  in  the  postal 
cards.  Between  the  two  orders  of  Table  XII  there 
is  14  per  cent  of  displacement;  the  more  constant 
judges  are  the  more  accurate.  As  the  objectivity 
of  the  experimental  material  increases,  we  should 
expect  this  correspondence  to  be  closer. 

*  "  The  Time  of  Perception  as  a  Measure  of  Differences  in  Sensation," 

Archives  of  Phil.,  Psych.,  and  Sci.  Methods,  No.  8,  1906. 


FREDERIC   LYIVIAN   WELLS         539 

Experiments  with  Weights 

It  seemed  best,  for  comparative  purposes,  to 
supplement  the  foreo;oing  ol)servations  with  a 
series  of  experiments  in  which  the  actual  differ- 
ences should  be  capable  of  determination  by 
strictly  objective  methods.  Wei<^hts  are  prob- 
a})ly  the  most  suitable  material  for  this  purpose. 
The  apparatus  consisted  of  six  wei<»;hts,  51,  53,  55, 
57,  59,  Gl  trrams,  respectively.^  The  weights  were 
made  of  dead  black  pasteboard  boxes,  Ij^^  x  3  J  x 
2-^\  in.,  filled  with  lead  and  cotton  to  the  required 
heaviness,  and  sealed.  In  the  experiments  the 
long  axis  of  the  weight  was  always  toward  the 
subject.  The  observations  include  100  arrange- 
ments of  the  weights  by  one  subject,  and  10 
arrangements  by  each  of  ten  subjects.  Of  the  sub- 
jects, G-J  were  normal  individuals,  the  remainder 
being  male  patients  in  the  hospital.  Subject  A  is 
a  man  of  65,  whose  mental  defect  is  a  mixed  para- 
phasia and  object  blindness.  At  the  time  of  the 
experiments  he  could  read  and  could  name  letters 
almost  normally,  but  could  not  name  objects, 
though  they  were  recognized.  ^Memory  was  much 
impaired.  lie  co-operated  conscientiously.  B, 
a^t.  52,  is  an  early  stage  of  general  paresis,  mildly 
euphoric.  lie  co-operated  willingly,  but  went  at 
the  test  in  a  quick  hit  or  miss  fashion.     C,  set.  72, 

'  The  exact  wcif^hts  as  measured  on  the  scales  of  the  physiolof^ical  labora- 
torj-  showed  a  practically  constant  excess  of  .4  gr.  for  each  weight. 


540    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

is  a  convalescent  from  a  third  attack  of  depres- 
sion. Co-operated  willingly,  but  showed  a  con- 
stant error  in  the  shape  of  a  tendency  to  leave  the 
weights  in  the  random  order  in  which  they  were 
placed  before  him.  D,  set.  64,  manic-depressive, 
one  previous  attack  of  depression,  at  present 
mildly  exhilarated.  Co-operated  willingly  and 
conscientiously,  but  made  frequent  pauses  be- 
tween the  arrangements  on  account  of  "  fatigue." 
E,  set.  38,  first  attack  of  manic-depression,  mixed 
phase,  mildly  exhilarated  at  time  of  experiment. 
Showed  same  tendency  as  C  in  leaving  w^eights  as 
at  first  placed.  F,  set.  32,  practical  recovery  from 
fourth  attack  of  depression.  Interested  in  experi- 
ment, and  co-operated  best  of  any  of  the  patients, 
also  doing  the  test  exceptionally  well.  One  other 
subject,  a  depression,  actively  lost  interest  after 
four  trials,  and  failed  to  co-operate  further.  Each 
patient  was  held  to  a  fixed  system  of  procedure, 
analogous  to  that  adopted  by  normal  subjects. 
Only  F  would  move  the  weights  of  his  own  accord, 
the  others  merely  gave  their  judgments.  The 
detail  of  their  results  qua  from  abnormal  subjects 
I  hope  to  discuss  at  some  future  time  in  connection 
with  other  observations.  The  data  from  the  nor- 
mal and  abnormal  subjects  are  quoted  separately. 
As  will  be  seen,  two  of  the  patients  do  normally, 
one  exceptionally,  well,  while  the  remaining  three 
do  rather  poorly.  On  the  whole,  there  is  nothing 
in  the  results  to  indicate  a  distinct  species  of  per- 


FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS 


541 


formance  in  the  abnormal  subject  as  a  class.  The 
<i;cneral  averao;e  is  probably  as  valid  for  present 
purposes  as  one  from  ten  normal  subjects. 

The    followinnj    tables    ^^ive    the    results    of    100 
arrangements  by  the  single  subject: 


TABLE 

XIII 

AVERAGEa 

Av. 

M.V. 

\ 

Series 

I 

II 

III 

1.8 

IV      V 

1 
1.5     1.4 

VI 

1.0 

VII 

1.2 

VIII   IX 

X 

Gl 

1.3 

1.2 

1.3 

2.0 

1.1 

1.4 

.24 

59 

2.3 

2.G 

2.7 

2.1  !  2.6 

2.5 

1.9 

1.9 

1.5 

2.0 

2.2 

.32 

57 

3.4 

3.3 

2.9 

2.7  j  2.4 

2.8 

3.0 

2.9 

3.2 

3.1 

3.0 

.23 

55 

3.7 

3.8 

4.3 

5.0     4.8 

4.3 

5.2 

4.7 

4.8 

4.8 

4.6 

.40 

53 

5.5 

5.4 

4.1 

4.5     4.8 

5.1 

4.1 

5.0 

4.5 

4.6 

4.8 

.40 

51 

4.8 

4.9 

1 

5.2 
1 

5.2  '  5.0 
1         1 

5.3 
0 

5.6 
1 

5.2 
0 

5.1 

2 

5.5 

1 

5.2 
0.9 

.28 
.29 

Displace- ) 
incuts  of  > 
averii^e    ; 

1 

2.5 

2.8 

3.6 

2  5  '  2.6 

1.7 

1.6 

1.7 

2.9 

1.4 

Averapeof  ) 
displace-  ? 
merits       ) 

2.3 

Each  column  contains  the  average  of  a  series  of 
ten  sinMe  arranircments.  It  will  be  noted  that  in 
only  two  cases  out  of  the  ten  docs  the  average  order 
correspond  with  the  objective  one.  Although  the 
general  average  of  the  hundred  arrangements  gives 
the  objective  order,  yet  the  displacements  in  the 
single  series  are  hardly  distributed  according  to 
chance.  The  fifth  weight,  53,  stands  fifth  with  a 
position  of  48  in  the  general  average,  but  in  five 


542    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

series  it  stood  above  55,  in  two  below  51,  and  in 
only  two  cases  did  it  stand  in  its  proper  position, 
thus  accounting  for  seven  out  of  the  nine  displace- 
ments of  the  averages  of  the  series.  In  four  of  the 
seven  cases,  namely  in  series  I,  II,  IV,  and  VII, 
the  negative  difference  hes  outside  the  limits  of  the 
probable  error.  VII  is  particularly  striking  on 
account  of  its  high  rehabihty  throughout. 

As  the  average  should  theoretically  give  the 
correct  order  no  matter  how  poor  the  individual's 
judgment,  the  average  of  the  displacements  of 
each  individual  arrangement  from  the  objective 
order  is  a  better  measure  of  difference  between  the 
accuracy  of  the  successive  series.  The  m.  v.  of 
the  average  order  should  also  afford  a  measure 
of  discriminativeness.  According  to  both  these 
measures  the  successive  series  show  considerable 
practice,  the  average  of  the  second  five  being  a 
little  over  two-thirds  that  of  the  first  five.  The 
drop  is  unusually  sudden.  It  may  be  observed 
that  the  displacement  of  the  average  and  the  aver- 
age of  displacements  for  the  individual  series  are 
only  moderately  correlated.  The  average  of  dis- 
placements and  the  size  of  the  m.  v.  are  correlated 
within  five  displacements  of  their  respective  or- 
ders, or  11  per  cent.  We  are  here  afforded  an 
opportunity  for  examining  empirically  the  accord- 
ance of  an  individual  series  with  the  average  as  a 
measure  of  the  relative  reliability  of  the  successive 
series.     As  the  average  orders  in  the  individual 


FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS 


543 


series  depart  from  the  objective  order,  the  method 
does  not  show  up  well.  Between  the  accordance 
of  each  series  of  ten  arrangements  to  their  average, 
and  the  average  of  their  dis|)lacements  from  the 
objective  order,  there  are  20  displacements,  44 
per  cent ;  between  the  accordance  of  each  series 
to  their  average,  and  the  size  of  the  m.  v.  in  each 
series,  there  are  17  displacements,  38  per  cent.^ 
The  mean  variations  of  each  series  of  ten  arranjje- 
ments  from  their  averages  (/.  e.,  the  m.  v.'s  of  the 
averages  in  the  preceding  table),  are  given  below. 


TABLE  XIV 


Me.\^'  Variations 

Av. 

Series 

I 

11 

III 

IV     v 

\'I 

VII 

VIII 

IX 

X 

61 

.58 

.32 

.96 

.70     .64 

.00 

.32 

.48 

.60 

.18 

.48 

59 

.66 

M 

1.10 

.36     .92 

.50 

.36 

.36 

.60 

.20 

.60 

57 

1.18 

.84 

1.01 

1 

.82     .60 

.80 

.20 

48 

.98 

.36 

.73 

55 

.96 

1.40 

.82  1 

.60     .80 

.56 

.48 

.76 

1.08 

.79 

.66 

53 

.60 

.84 

1.32 

.80 

.72 

.76 

.40 

.60 

.60 

.80 

.74 

51 

1.00 

.74 

.80  : 

.80     .80 

.66 
.55 

.48 

.80 

.90 

.60 

.76 

Av.  m.  V. 

.83 

.84 

1.00 

.68 

.75 

.38 

.58 

.79 

.49 

.69 

The   average   of   the   m.  v.'s   is   naturallv   .some- 

'  This  is  in  part  due  to  tlie  fact  that  the  jnwr  ju(lf,Miieiits  draw  the  end 
wei!,'Iits  toward  the  middle  while  tiie  ^'ood  jiid^'ineiil.*  kifpthein  at  the  ends, 
tlius  f^ettiiifj  a  hij^h  variability  for  tlie  extremes;  if  we  tike  oidy  the  two 
middle  weij^hts,  57  and  55,  we  have  from  the  axcra^e  of  displacements  17  dis- 
placcnicuts,  or  38  jxt  cent,  instead  of  41  {kt  cent. 


544    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

what  larger  than  the  m.  v.  of  the  averages,  as 
given  in  Table  XIII.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  psy- 
chophysical relationship  plays  little  part  in  these 
results;  the  difference  between  51  and  53  should 
be  greater  than  that  between  59  and  61,  but  so  far 
as  can  be  judged  from  the  results,  61  is  more  easily 
distinguished  from  59  than  53  from  51.  This  is 
surprising,  as  the  one  hundred  arrangements  ought 
to  be  sufficient  to  bring  out  such  a  difference.  The 
m.  v.'s  of  the  averages,  as  given  in  Table  XIII,  are 
smallest  at  the  ends,  as  they  arithmetically  should 
be ;  but  the  averages  of  the  m.  v.'s,  in  Table  XIV, 
seem  to  increase  as  the  weights  become  smaller. 

We  may  now  compare  the  variation  of  the  single 
subject  through  ten  successive  series,  with  the 
variation  of  ten  different  subjects  through  a  single 
series  of  ten  arrangements  each.  The  results  of 
these  experiments  are  summarized  in  Tables  XV 
and  XVI. 

The  figures  present  the  same  general  character- 
istics as  those  in  Tables  XIII  and  XIV.  The 
single  subject  has  varied  from  his  own  judgments 
a  little  less  than  the  ten  subjects  among  themselves, 
but  this  is  in  part  due  to  practice,  which  brings 
down  the  m.  v.  If  we  take  the  m.  v.  of  the  first 
five  series  in  which  practice  is  not  evident  to  any 
marked  degree,  and  compare  this  with  the  varia- 
tion of  the  four  normal  subjects,  we  see  that  the 
single  subject  has  varied  from  himself  rather  more 
than  the  four  normal  subjects  among  themselves. 


FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS 


545 


TABLE  XV 


AYEEAOBa 

At. 

1.6 
2.6 
3.1 
4  1 
4.6 
6.2 

0.9 

M.V. 

At. 

6 

path. 

At. 

4 
nor- 

Subject 

wt. 
61 

59 

57 

55 

63 

51 

A        B 

C 

~"~ 
1.7 

4.0 

4.0 

3.4 

2.8 

4.9 

4 

4.9 

D 

1.6 
2.1 
3.0 
4.3 
6.1 
60 

1 
2.4 

E 

2.4 

2.7 
2.6 
4.3 
4.3 
4.8 

1 
4.7 

F 

1.5 
2.3 
2.6 
4.2 
4.9 
6.6 

0 
1.8 

0 

1.3 
2.3 
3.4 
3.7 
6.5 
4.8 

1 
2.6 

H 

1.8 
2  6 
3.0 
4.4 

6.0 
6.2 

0 
2.3 

I 

1.1 

1.9 
3.0 
4.1 
6.0 

5.8 

0 

J 

1.4 
2.0 
3.1 
4.6 
4.3 
6.0 

1 

1.4 
2.8 
2.8 
4.1 
4.3 
6.6 

1.7 
2.8 
3.7 
4.1 
3.8 
4.9 

1 
4.1 

0.26 
0.43 
0.32 
0.24 
0.60 
0.32 

1.7 

2.6 
3.1 
4.0 
4.2 
6.2 

1.4 

2.2 
3.1 
4.2 
4.8 
6.2 

Displace- 
ment of 
arerages 

1- 

Av.  of 
displace- 
ments 

0.7 

2.7 

2.9 

3.4 

2.1 

TABLE  XVI 


Mban  Vamatiohs 

Av. 

At. 

6 

path. 

At. 
4 

nor- 
mal 

Subject. 

A 

B 

C 

D 

B 

r 

G 

H 

I 

J 

wt. 
61 

0.48 

0.68 

0.60 

0.60 

0.84 

0.50 

0.68 

0.68 

0.09    0.56 

0.66 

0.60 

0.48 

59 

0.88 

1.20 

1.40 

0.74 

1.31 

0.82 

0.66 

0.60 

0.09  j  0.60 

0.83 

1.06 

0.49 

67 

1.20 

1.36 

1.00 

0.70 

1.50 

0.86 

1.18 

0.80 

0.20 

1.16 

1.00 

1.10 

0.84 

66 

0.74 

1.51 

1.40 

1.09 

1.10 

0.48 

0.96 

0.88 

0.46 

1.08 

0.97 

1.06 

0.84 

53 

0.73 

1.04 

1.24 

0.54 

1.27 

0.92 

0.60 

0.60 

0.40 

0.75 

0.81 

0.96 

0.69 

61 

0.60 

1.14 

0.94 
1.10 

0.80 

1.12 

0.48 

1.00 

0.66 
0.70 

0.16 

0.22 

0.40 
0.76 

0.72 

0.85 

0.83 
0.93 

0.68 

0.64 

Av.  m.  T. 

0.77 

0.75 

1.19 

0.68 

0.83 

The  figure  for  the  single  subject  is  .82,  for  the  six 
patients  it  is  .93,  and  for  the  four  normal  sub- 
jects .64.  This  is  anomalous,  for  the  variation  of 
an  individual  should  only  approach  the  limit  of 
the  variabihty    of   the   group   and   not  exceed   it. 

35 


546    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

Nevertheless,  a  striking  contrast  is  formed  to  the 
relative  variations  in  the  repeated  judgments  of 
the  postal  cards,  where  each  subject's  judgments 
were  a  distinct  species  of  their  own. 

In  Table  XV  the  record  of  subject  C  contains 
two  very  coarse  deviations  from  the  objective 
order.  There  is  a  remarkable  overestimation  of 
53  and  a  lesser  one  of  55^  while  57  and  59  have 
correspondingly  low  positions.  It  may  be  remem- 
bered that  this  subject  showed  a  tendency  to 
leave  the  weights  as  they  were  put  before  him,  and 
in  random  arrangements  53  would  ordinarily  oc- 
cupy a  position  higher  than  its  objective  one,  59  a 
lower.  But  so  would  51  and  61,  which  are  un- 
affected. Subject  I  underestimates  53,  J  over- 
estimates it.  Altogether,  53  is  seen  to  have  a  very 
pecuHar  behavior. 

Comparing,  as  in  Tables  XIII  and  XIV,  the 
average  of  displacement  with  the  average  m.  v., 
we  find  between  them  four  displacements,  9  per 
cent.  The  order  of  discriminativeness  of  the  ten 
subjects  as  measured  by  the  accordance  of  their 
individual  averages  with  the  average  of  the  ten, 
gives  14  displacements  from  the  average  of  dis- 
placements and  15  from  the  size  of  the  average 
m.  v.,  31  per  cent  and  33  per  cent  respectively. 
The  displacements  of  the  two  middle  weights,  57 
and  55,  from  the  average  of  displacements  are  11, 
or  24  per  cent  instead  of  31  per  cent,  for  the  whole 
six   weights.     This   result   thus   agrees   strikingly 


FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS         547 

with  the  result  for  the  single  subject.  The  final 
average  order  being  correct  in  both  cases,  it  would 
seem  that,  empirically,  the  number  of  displace- 
ments of  an  individual  order  from  an  average  gives 
a  better  idea  of  its  relative  correctness  than  the 
precise  arithmetical  amount  of  its  deviation  from 
this  order.  It  may  then  also  be  used  in  cases  where 
there  is  no  objective,  only  an  average  order,  as  in 
judgments  of  mental  traits. 

Evidence  of  the  psychophysical  relationship  is 
again  absent;  61  has  a  much  smaller  m.  v.  than 
51,  while  those  of  59  and  53  are  practically  equal. 
The  m.  v.'s  are  here  largest  in  the  middle,  as  they 
should  be. 

Conclusion 

We  have  thus  made  a  brief  study  of  variability 
in  three  classes  of  judgment;  first,  the  highly 
subjective  feeling  of  preference  for  different  sorts 
of  pictures,  second,  the  more  objective  judgment  of 
color  differences,  and  finally  of  a  type  of  judgment 
whose  accuracy  could  be  readily  measured  by 
objt^ctive  means.  It  has  appeared  that  in  the  first 
class  the  judgments  of  each  individual  cluster 
about  a  mean  which  is  true  for  that  individual 
only,  and  which  varies  from  that  of  any  other  in- 
dividual more  than  twice  as  much  as  its  own 
judgments  vary  from  it;  that  in  the  second  class, 
with  the  colors,  the  variabihty  of  the  successive 


548    VARIABILITY  OF   JUDGMENTS 

judgments  and  those  by  different  individuals  mark- 
edly approached  each  other,  but  still  preserved  a 
significant  difference;  while  in  the  third  class, 
with  the  weights,  we  found  that  there  might  be 
even  an  excess  of  the  individual  variability  over 
the  "social."  This  comparison  seems  to  afford, 
to  a  certain  extent,  a  quantitative  criterion  of  the 
subjective. 

In  objective  fields  those  who  vary  least  from 
their  own  judgments  are,  in  the  absence  of  con- 
stant error,  those  of  the  most  rehable  judgment; 
indeed,  the  constancy  of  our  own  opinions  among 
themselves  seems  to  be  more  important  than  their 
agreement  with  the  standard  of  others.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  those  who  vary  less  from  their  own 
judgments  are  more  likely  to  vary  less  from  the 
judgments  of  others  in  the  cards  and  colors  than 
in  the  weights;  it  has  been  shown  that  this  can- 
not be  ascribed  wholly  to  the  small  ranges  with  the 
weights. 

It  has  again  appeared  in  these  experiments  that 
even  in  those  fields  that  we  might  ordinarily  term 
most  strictly  objective,  there  are  often  certain  re- 
lations between  compared  stimuli  that  are  constant 
and  peculiar  to  the  individual.  The  same  phe- 
nomenon appeared  in  Henmon's  work  on  color- 
differentiation,  two  pairs  of  colors  not  necessarily 
standing  in  the  same  relation  to  each  other  with 
two  individuals.  The  writer  also  observed  it  in 
experimenting  with  sounds  of  language,  there  oc- 


FREDERIC   LYMAN   WELLS         549 

curring  a  constant  tendency  to  hear  certain  sounds 
rather  than  others,  which  differed  with  the  in- 
dividual. This  is,  however,  most  difficult  to 
understand  with  our  weights,  for  it  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  the  differences  were  not  only  of 
kind,  but  also  of  degree.  The  situation  is  not  one 
that  could  be  readily  accounted  for  by  displaced 
centres  of  gravity.  This  peculiar  phenomenon,  for 
which  sensation  habit  is  perhaps  as  good  a  term  as 
any,  is  one  that  stands  in  much  need  of  special 
and  accurate  investigation. 


THE  VALIDITY   OF   JUDGMENTS  OF 
CHARACTER 


THE   VALIDITY   OF   JUDGMENTS  OF 
CHARACTER 

By  Naomi  Norsworthy 

1  HE  problem  of  the  jud(]jment  of  character  is 
one  which  is  continually  confrontinfi^  people  of  all 
classes  and  stations.  In  many  instances  the  cor- 
rect estimate  of  a  person's  character  is  of  vital 
importance.  The  success  of  officers  of  adminis- 
tration from  the  President  of  the  United  States  to 
the  school  superintendent  of  a  small  village  depends 
often  on  their  ability  to  choose  for  their  subordi- 
nates persons  of  the  proper  character.  In  every- 
day life  one's  happy  choice  of  friends,  one's 
ability  to  sell  goods,  to  persuade  people  to  accept 
a  new  point  of  view  or  doctrine,  to  get  on  harmoni- 
ously with  people  in  general  in  all  the  various 
occupations  of  life  depends  upon  one's  ability  to 
estimate  the  powers,  capacities,  and  characteristics 
of  people.  To  those  who  have  to  make  personal 
recommendations  or  make  use  of  those  made  by 
others,  this  question  of  judgment  of  character  is 
a  grave  one.  Is  it  possible  tor  one  to  judge  at  all 
fairly  the  character  of  another  ?  When  a  recom- 
mendation is  read  by  an  appointing  officer,  how 

555 


554      JUDGMENTS  OF  CHARACTER 

far  does  he  get  the  estimate  of  character  which  the 
writer  intended  him  to  have?  If  the  question 
concerned  some  physical  facts  about  an  individual 
such  as  his  acuity  of  vision  or  his  height,  there  would 
be  no  diflSculty  in  obtaining  a  figure  which  would 
express  his  exact  position  in  this  measurement 
as  compared  with  other  people.  Even  if  the  ques- 
tion concerned  some  definite  mental  trait  such  as 
his  speed  of  reaction  or  perception,  or  his  ability 
to  deal  with  abstract  ideas  within  a  certain  field, 
an  exact  numerical  answer  could  be  given.  But 
with  such  a  complex  thing  as  leadership,  efficiency, 
refinement,  and  the  other  vague  and  indefinite 
traits  to  which  we  refer  when  we  use  the  term 
character,  much  doubt  may  be  felt  as  to  whether 
exact  quantitative  estimates  are  possible.  This 
then  is  the  chief  problem  of  this  paper.  Can  such 
a  trait  as  leadership  or  refinement  be  measured  in 
numerical  units  with  any  degree  of  exactitude.'' 
Most  people  will  agree  at  once  that  such  traits  as 
those  mentioned  cannot  be  measured  in  ordinary 
units  of  amount,  for,  in  the  first  place,  the  zero 
points  from  which  to  begin  the  reckoning  are  not 
known,  and  in  the  second  place,  these  traits  mani- 
fest themselves  in  such  complicated  and  subtle 
ways  that  the  task  of  expressing  them  in  units  of 
amount  is  hopeless.  Though  this  method  cannot 
be  followed,  the  method  of  measurement  by  rela- 
tive position  in  a  series  might  be.  People  might 
be  ranked  in  order  according  to  their  power  of 


NAOMI  NORSWORTHY  555 

leadership  or  according  to  their  refinement,  and  if 
this  were  proved  to  be  possible,  the  numerical  rat- 
ing by  such  a  means  would  be  just  as  exact  as 
though  the  rating  represented  units  of  amount. 
This  method  has  been  used  recently  by  Professor 
Cattell  in  his  study  of  the  eminence  of  men  of 
science. 

The  traits  which  I  chose  for  investigation  were 
the  following:  physical  health,  mental  balance, 
intellect,  emotions,  will,  quickness,  intensity, 
breadth,  energ\*,  judgment,  originality,  persever- 
ance, reasonableness,  clearness,  independence, 
co-operativeness,  unselfishness,  kindliness,  cheer- 
fulness, refinement,  integrity,  courage,  efficiency, 
and  leadership.^  The  question  then  is :  Is  it  possi- 
ble to  give  anyone  a  rank  or  position  in  these 
characteristics  with  any  degree  of  exactness  ? 

Individual  X,  a  teacher,  was  given  grades  in  the 
above  traits  by  five  judges,  the  mother  and  the 
two  adult  brothers  of  X,  an  intimate  friend  and  a 
colleague  in  the  university,  who  assigned  these 
grades  to  X  in  accordance  with  the  following 
directions :  Give  X  her  position  among  a  hundred 
college  instructors  of  about  the  same  age  in  each 
of  the  traits  mentioned.  A  rank  of  100  in  any 
trait  would  mean  that  X  stood,  in  the  opinion  of 
that  judge,  as  highest  among  the  hundred  instruc- 
tors ;  a  grade  of  1  would  mean  that  she  ranked  as 

'  These  were  selected  by  I*rofessor  Cattell  and  were  used  by  him  in  some 
of  his  work. 


556      JUDGMENTS  OF  CHARACTER 

lowest.  Similarly  a  grade  of  80  would  mean  that 
of  the  hundred  19  ranked  higher  and  79  lower  than 
she ;  34  would  mean  that  65  ranked  higher  and  33 
lower  than  she,  etc.  Two  records  were  taken  from 
each  judge,  the  time  between  the  two  varying 
from  six  weeks  to  four  months.  The  gradings 
were  as  given  in  Table  I. 

The  first  question  to  be  raised  on  examining 
these  gradings  would  probably  be,  Do  they  mean 
anything  ?  If  we  had  rankings  of  X  by  a  thousand 
such  judges  instead  of  by  five  how  would  the  two 
sets  compare  ?  How  closely  do  these  rankings 
approximate  the  true  ranking  of  X,  meaning  by 
true  ranking  the  ranking  given  by  all  the  compe- 
tent people  who  know  X  well. 

That  these  rankings  mean  something  and  are 
not  the  result  of  random  choice  or  chance  is  proved 
in  two  ways.  (1)  In  the  second  trials,  the  same 
judge  does  not  diverge  far  from  his  first  rating. 
(2)  The  double  judgments  of  the  five  judges  do 
not  diverge  far  from  each  other. 

To  answer  this  question  it  is  not  necessary  to  use 
the  whole  series  of  traits.  The  following  eight 
traits  have  been  selected :  intellect,  quickness, 
breadth,  originality,  co-operativeness,  refinement, 
efficiency,  and  leadership.  In  the  two  trials  with 
these  traits  the  average  difference  of  the  first  judg- 
ment from  the  second  in  the  case  of  A  is  9.5.  The 
average  difference  of  the  two  trials  from  the  aver- 
age of  the  two  (the  A.  D.  dis)  is  4.7.    A  judgment 


NAOMI   NORSWORTHY 

TABLE  I 


557 


1 

A 

B 

C 

D 

E 

ut 

Sd 

1st 

3d 

ut 

2d 

1st 

2d 

lit 

3d 

Physical  health 

60 

70 

50 

50 

60 

50 

55 

45 

37 

40 

Alental  balance 

53 

80 

80 

90 

70 

90 

82 

82 

83 

85 

Intellect     .    .    . 

95 

90 

95 

90 

90 

90 

92 

88 

80 

84 

Emotions   .    .    . 

40 

60 

80 

85 

50 

60 

85 

77 

63 

50 

Will 

90 

90 

90 

90 

90 

89 

90 

78 

75 

70 

Quickness      .    . 

95 

85 

90 

95 

90 

86 

98 

92 

100 

100 

Intensity    .    .    . 

85 

85 

80 

90 

60 

65 

88 

83 

80 

85 

Breadth      .    .    . 

40 

50 

75 

75 

60 

80 

45 

45 

51 

63 

Energy   .... 

75 

75 

90 

85 

80 

86 

90 

82 

80 

90 

Judgment  .    .    . 

62 

80 

85 

80 

60 

75 

88 

78 

90 

90 

Originality     .    . 

48 

60 

70 

75 

50 

50 

85 

87 

60 

66 

Perseverance 

88 

85 

90 

85 

90 

98 

78 

65 

73 

80 

Reasonableness 

45 

80 

75 

70 

50 

60 

65 

55 

83 

80 

Clearness    .    .    . 

87 

100 

85 

75 

85 

80 

88 

75 

80 

85 

Independence    . 

- 

90 

80 

60 

80 

80 

92 

77 

60 

65 

Co-operativeness 

50 

60 

85 

80 

87 

86 

65 

40 

99 

95 

Un.sel6shne3S 

77 

90 

95 

85 

95 

99 

95 

85 

90 

90 

Kindliness      .    . 

87 

90 

90 

85 

90 

65 

90 

92 

100 

95 

Cheerfulness 

73 

80 

90 

90 

90 

86 

68 

72 

83 

85 

Refinement    .    . 

69 

95 

95 

95 

95 

89 

88 

75 

85 

75 

Integrity     .    .    . 

93 

100 

95 

95 

99 

99 

98 

92 

83 

90 

Courage     .    .    . 

85 

95 

98 

90 

85 

00 

75 

62 

65 

75 

Efficiency  .    .    . 

84 

85 

90 

95 

80 

70 

88 

75 

95 

99 

Leadership    .    . 

73 

75 

80 

70 

50 

60 

90 

77 

69 

67 

A  and  B  wito  the  two  udult  brothers  of  X. 
C  was  the  motlier. 


1)  was  the  friend. 
E  was  tlie  colleague. 


558      JUDGMENTS  OF  CHARACTER 

on  the  scale  of  100  made  twice  has  a  reliability  of 

A.  D.  dis  .  1   .  «  ^  rr^i   .  1 

1= or  in  this  case  3.3.      ims  means  then 

Vn 

that  the  chances  are  99  to  1  against  his  true  judg- 
ments differing  from  92.5,  90,  45,  54,  55,  82,  84.5, 
and  74,  which  are  the  average  judgments  of  the 
two  trials,  by  more  than  10.  Following  the  same 
method  with  the  other  four  judges,  the  reliability 
of  the  average  judgment  of  B  is  1.77;  that  of  C  is 
2.12 ;  that  of  D  is  3.33 ;  that  of  E  is  2.34 ;  the  reha- 
bility  being  measured  in  each  case  by  the  probable 
average  divergence  of  the  true  judgment  from  that 
obtained  by  only  two  trials.  Such  judges  as  these 
then,  in  two  rather  casual  and  hasty  ratings  of  an 
individual,  approximate  closely  to  the  results  they 
would  give  if  they  rated  the  individual  an  infinite 
number  of  times.  Each  judge's  measures  are  at 
least  characteristic  of  him. 

In  the  second  place,  the  five  judges  do  not 
diverge  far  from  each  other  in  their  estimates 
of  these  eight  traits,  as  is  shown  by  the  table 
below. 

This  means  that  if  we  had  an  infinite  number 
of  such  judges  of  X's  intellect  the  chances  are 
about  6  to  4  against  their  differing  from  90  by  more 
than  1.16,  and  99  to  1  against  their  differing  from  90 
by  more  than  3.6.  These  two  facts  then,  first  that 
the  individual  judges  in  their  second  rating  do  not 
diverge  far  from  their  first,  and  second,  that  the 
five  judges  in  their  rating  of  these  traits  do  not 


NAOMI  NORSWORTHY 


559 


diverge  far  from  each,  prove  that  the  ratings  do 
stand  for  some  actual  quantitative  value  and  are 
not  subject  to  mere  chance.  Character  then  can 
be  measured  quantitatively.     Such  complex  traits 


TABLE  II 


Median  of 
the  five 
ratings 

Average  de- 
viation of 
the  five 
from  their 
median 

Probable  average 
divergence  of  the 
median  of  the  five 
from  the  median 

of  an  infinite 

numljer  of  such 

judges 

Intellect 

90.0 

2.G 

I.IG 

Quickness 

9-2.5 

4.4 

1.97 

Breadth    

57.0 

11.0 

4.93 

Originality 

G3.0 

10.7 

4.79 

Co-operativeness     .    . 

82.5 

15.2 

G.81 

ReBnement      .... 

82.0 

5.5 

2.4G 

Efficiency 

84.5 

G.7 

3.00 

Leadership 

74.0 

6.1 

2.73 

as    refinement,    leadership,    etc.,    can    be    rated 
numerically. 

The  validity  of  the  judgments  in  the  sense  of 
their  correspondence  with  the  actual  character  of 
X  is  then  only  a  matter  of  the  impartiality  of  the 
group  of  judges.  If  these  five  judges  did  as  a 
group  represent  an  impartial  judgment  of  X  the 
ratings  of  Table  II  would  represent  measures  of 
character  more  valid  and  more  precise  than  the 


560      JUDGMENTS  OF   CHARACTER 

measurement  of  an  individual's  discrimination  of 
length  or  reaction  time  or  memory  span  obtained 
from  five  trials  of  the  kind  customarily  made. 

The  certainty  of  impartiality  in  the  judges  can  of 
course  never  be  attained.  All  the  world  may  be 
wrong.  A  working  certainty  is  obtained  by  select- 
ing judges  at  random  from  those  who  are  intellec- 
ually  competent  and  are  trained  in  observation  of 
human  nature. 

These  conclusions  would  be  insecure  if  based 
on  the  case  of  X  alone,  but  they  have  been  fully 
corroborated  by  various  partial  studies  of  the 
validity  of  judgment  by  other  judges  of  other  in- 
dividuals. For  instance,  nine  members  of  a  college 
sorority  were  graded  by  five  of  their  number  with 
respect  to  this  same  list  of  traits.  The  different 
individuals  of  the  nine  do  not  receive  the  same 
grades  and  the  different  judges  do  agree  to  a  large 
extent  in  their  grades  of  the  same  individual. 
That  is,  the  judgments  are  by  no  means  random ; 
are  reasonably  precise;  and  are  valid  in  so  far  as 
the  judges  are  impartial.  The  results  obtained 
in  the  sample  case  of  X  may  be  expected  in 
general. 

From  such  a  series  of  measurements  as  those 
in  Table  II,  the  question  arises.  How  far  is  the 
order  of  excellence  of  X  in  the  various  traits  shown 
by  the  table  reliable.^  The  reHabihty  of  a  differ- 
ence between  two  measures  equals  the  square  root 
of  the  sum  of  the  squares  of  the  reliabilities  of  the 


NAOMI   NORSWORTHY 


oGl 


measures  themselves.     The  rehabihties  of  the  or- 
der ascertained  may  be  seen  from  Table  III. 


T-\BLE  III 


Average  diver- 

Rating 

Order 

Obtained 
differences 

gences  of   "true" 

dilfereuces  from 

the      obtained 

differences 

Quickness      .    . 

92.5 

1 

2.5 

2.3 

Intellect      .    .    . 

90.0 

2 

5.5 

3.2 

Efficiency  .    .    . 

84.5 

3 

2.4- 

3.9 

Co-opcrativcness 

82.5 

4 

and 

and 

an<i 

Refinement    .    . 

82.0 

5 

8.+ 

7.4 

I^eadership    .    . 

74.0 

6 

11.0 

5.0 

Originality     .    . 

63.0 

7 

CO 

6.9 

Breadth      .    .    . 

57.0 

s 

In  so  far  as  the  judges  are  as  a  group  impartial 
in  their  ratings  of  X  in  each  of  the  traits  in  com- 
parison with  their  average  ratings  of  X  for  the 
whole  eight  (and  that  they  are  approximately  so, 
there  can  be  little  doubt),  there  is  certainty  (in  the 
score  of  a  probability  of  99  to  1)  that  X  is  higher 
in  Quickness  than  in  Refinement,  Leadership, 
Originality,  and  Breadth ;  that  she  is  higher  in 
Intellect  than  in  Leadership,  Originality,  and 
Breadth  ;  and  so  on  with  other  comparisons.  The 
order  Quickness- Intellect  (1),  Efficiency,  Co-oper- 
ativeness,  or  Refinement  (2),  Ivcadership  (3),  Origi- 
nality and  Breadth  (4),  is  practically  certain. 


36 


56^      JUDGMENTS  OF  CHARACTER 

Having  then  a  true  estimate  of  X's  rank  in  these 
traits,  this  knowledge  might  be  used  to  obtain  an 
answer  to  the  question,  Is  the  abiUty  to  judge  char- 
acter a  measurable  power?  It  might  be  possible 
to  rank  people  in  their  ability  to  judge  the  character 
of  others  in  the  same  way  that  we  rank  people  in 
their  ability  to  read  German,  or  react  to  a  sound,  or 
sort  grays.  To  test  this  possibility  two  college 
classes  were  asked  to  rank  X  in  the  twenty-four 
traits  before  mentioned.  The  directions  given 
were  the  same  as  those  given  to  the  five  judges 
with  the  additional  request  that  no  names  appear 
on  the  papers.  This  was  done  in  order  that  the 
judgments  be  as  frank  as  possible.  Three  hun- 
dred and  eighty-seven  papers  were  received,  and  of 
these  200  were  picked  at  random.  The  order  of 
the  eight  traits  determined  by  the  five  judges  was 
taken  as  the  standard  order.  The  sum  of  the  vari- 
ations of  each  individual's  judgment  from  the  true 
order  was  found.  For  instance,  one  student  ranked 
X  as  follows:  1  refinement,  2  intellect,  3  co-oper- 
ativeness,  4  breadth,  5  quickness,  6  leadership, 
7  efficiency,  8  originahty.  The  variations  of  this 
ranking  from  the  order  given  by  the  five  judges 
are  3,  0,  2,  4,  4,  0,  4,  1  and  their  sum  is  18.  The 
200  students  were  then  distributed  according  to  the 
sum  of  errors  of  displacement  from  the  true  order. 
The  total  distribution  is  shown  in  Fig.  1. 

This  means  that  there  were  four  students,  who 
in  ranking  X  in  the  eight  traits,  made  only  6-7 


NAOMI  NORSWORTHY 


563 


errors  from  the  standard  order,  that  there  were  32 
students  who  made  14-15  errors  from  the  stand- 
ard order,  etc.  It  is  evident  that  the  sums  of  the 
variations  from  the  standard  order  range  from  6 
to   24.     Probably   this   does   not   mean   that  one 

45 


40 

30 

1 ' 

80 

20 

80 

16 

\ 

5 

b 

10 


12 


14  16 

Fitiuui:  1 


18 


ao 


82 


84 


student  is  four  times  as  good  a  judge  of  character 
as  another.  The  students  differed  somewhat  in 
amount  of  knowledge  of  X  as  well  as  in  capacity 
to  judge  and  the  variations  due  to  chance  are  large. 
But  the  data  do  give  reason  to  believe  that  people 
differ  from  each  other  in  this  ability  as  they  do  in 


564      JUDGMENTS  OF   CHARACTER 

mathematical  ability  or  in  ability  to  spell,  and 
that  these  differences  in  accuracy  of  judgment  of 
character  can  be  measured  conveniently  and  pre- 
cisely by  first  securing  a  true  standard  order  of 
characteristics  in  say  ten  persons,  who  as  a  group 
are  equally  well  known  to  the  individuals  whose 
power  of  judgment  we  wish  to  measure,  and  then 
proceeding  as  in  the  experiment. 

This  variability  in  people's  power  to  judge  char- 
acter suggested  two  further  questions:  (1)  Are 
there  some  people  about  whose  character  there 
will  be  a  greater  difference  of  opinion  than  about 
others  ?  (2)  Are  there  certain  traits  about  which 
there  is  less  agreement  in  judging  them  than  others  ? 
To  answer  the  first  question  it  was  necessary  to 
have  a  group  of  people  of  about  the  same  age  and 
social  standing  who  knew  each  other  somewhat 
equally  well.  A  small  sorority  in  a  college  was 
decided  upon  as  fulfilling  these  conditions  fairly 
well.  The  list  of  characteristics  with  the  directions 
as  before  were  given  to  ten  members  of  this  sorority 
and  each  was  asked  to  rank  every  other  in  all  the 
traits.  Three  of  the  girls  failed  to  send  papers. 
The  first  step  in  dealing  with  the  seven  papers 
was  to  ascertain  whether  the  same  standard  for 
judgment  had  been  used  by  each  one.  To  do  this 
the  grades  of  each  observer  were  distributed  and 
her  median  obtained.  It  was  found  that  one  of 
the  observers  had  used  a  very  much  lower  stand- 
ard than  the  others,  therefore  her  estimates  were 


NAOMI   NORSWORTHY  565 

omitted.  The  remaining  six  approximated  very 
closely  the  same  standard  —  00  as  Med.  This 
left  five  judgments  for  each  girl  in  every  trait. 
The  Med.  and  A.  D.  of  the  five  judgments  of  each 
trait  for  A  were  obtained.  Then  the  average  of 
the  A.  D.  was  found.  The  same  was  done  for 
each  of  the  other  subjects.  This  average  for  each 
individual  showed  the  relative  variability  of  the 
judgments  of  these  sorority  members  in  the  case 
of  each  other.  They  are  as  follows :  A,  8.0 ;  B, 
7.5;  C,  7.5;  D,  7.5;  E,  G.6;  F,  G.5 ;  G,  6.5;  H, 
6.1;  I,  5.7;  J,  4.1.  From  these  figures  it  would 
seem  that  among  ten  girls  who  know  each  other 
well  there  may  be  twice  as  much  difference  of 
opinion  about  some  one  member  of  the  group  as 
about  some  other.  A,  about  whom  there  seems 
to  have  been  most  difference  of  opinion,  was  ranked 
as  below  the  average  college  girl  in  seven  of  the 
traits.  J,  about  whom  there  seems  to  have  been 
most  agreement,  was  ranked  at  about  the  average, 
from  50  to  55  in  most  of  the  traits. 

The  second  question,  as  to  the  variability  in  the 
judgments  of  certain  traits,  brought  to  light  some 
ink  resting,  if  not  very  significant,  results.  As 
they  were  ol)tained  from  such  a  small  number  of 
judges,  they  are  only  tentative.  The  papers  sent 
in  by  the  sorority  members  were  used.  The  aver- 
age of  the  A.  1).  for  each  trait  for  all  individuals 
was  obtained  to  show  the  relative  variability  of 
the  different  traits.     The  results  are  as  follows : 


566      JUDGMENTS  OF   CHARACTER 

Physical  health 6.1        Reasonableness 5.7 

Mental  balance 5.4        Clearness 5.0 

Intellect 6.4        Independence 6.5 

Emotions 6.0        Co-operativeness 7.5 

Will 6.5        Unselfishness 7.0 

Quickness 5.8        Kindliness 8.3 

Intensity 7.5        Cheerfulness 7.4 

Breadth 6.1        Refinement 7.7 

Energy 7.2        Integrity      8.6 

Judgment 5.2        Courage 7.9 

Originality 5.1         Efiiciency 6.1 

Perseverance 6.7        Leadership      6.8 

The  most  noticeable  fact  about  this  series  is 
that  there  is  comparatively  little  variability  —  the 
figures  follow  each  other  very  closely,  there  being 
but  a  difference  of  3.6  between  the  lowest  and  the 
highest.  However,  it  is  interesting  to  notice  that 
the  traits  about  which  there  is  most  difference  of 
opinion  are  Integrity,  Kindliness,  and  Refinement. 
Evidently  people  use  the  words  loosely  or  their 
standards  for  judging  these  particular  traits  vary 
much  more  than  most  of  the  others  do.  From 
the  standpoint  of  recommendation  blanks  sent  out 
by  agencies,  etc.,  this  is  rather  unfortunate,  for 
the  blanks  mentioned  always  include  matters  of 
integrity  and  refinement  and  from  these  figures  it 
seems  probable  that  any  individual  opinion  would 
be  less  reliable  in  the  case  of  these  traits  than  in  the 
case  of  any  others  of  the  list.  Such  traits  as  clear- 
ness, mental  balance,  judgment,  and  originality  — 
all  of  which  are  important  factors  in  the  success 
of  a  teacher  —  are  usually  omitted  though  these 


NAOMI   NORSWORTHY  567 

are  the  very  traits  where  the  figures  show  the  great- 
est reliability. 

It  would  seem  possible  by  the  use  of  some  such 
method  as  this  carried  out  on  a  very  much  wider 
scale,  to  justify  a  list  of  traits,  numerical  estimates 
of  which  by  competent  people  would  be  both 
reliable  and  significant. 


REACTIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS 


REACTIONS   AND   PERCEPTIONS 

By  J.vmeh  McKeen  Catteix. 

vJNE  of  the  many  contributions  which  make 
James's  "  Principles "  the  foundation  of  modern 
psychology  is  the  emphasis  placed  on  the  relation 
of  movements  to  mental  life.  ^Ve  are  told  that 
physiologically  considered  the  whole  neural  mech- 
anism is  a  machine  for  converting  stimuli  into  re- 
actions, and  one  of  the  most  original  applications 
of  the  fact  that  objects  excite  bodily  changes  by  a 
preorganized  mechanism  is  made  in  the  explanation 
of  the  emotions.  I  venture  to  take  this  occasion 
to  propose  a  thesis,  which  in  certain  aspects  is  an- 
alogous to  the  James  theory  of  the  emotions.  This 
thesis  is  that  perceptions  are  distinguished  from 
images  by  the  greater  prominence  of  the  conative 
or  motor  elements. 

Hume  begins  the  first  book  of  the  "  Treatise " 
with  the  familiar  words :  "  All  the  perceptions  of  the 
human  mind  resolve  themselves  into  two  distinct 
kinds,  which  I  shall  call  impressions  and  ideas. 
The  difference  betwixt  these  consists  in  the  degrees 
of  force  and  liveliness  with  which  they  strike  upon 
the  mind,  and  make  their  way  into  our  thought  or 

571 


572     REACTIONS  AND   PERCEPTIONS 

consciousness."  Now  it  is  apparently  possible  to 
make  a  further  analysis  to  the  effect  that  the 
superior  force  and  liveliness  of  the  impression  as 
compared  with  the  idea,  or  of  the  perception  as 
compared  with  the  image,  is  due  in  part  to  the 
greater  prevalence  and  definiteness  of  the  motor 
elements. 

It  is  not  intended  to  argue  that  the  larger  motor 
element  is  the  only  criterion  of  perceptions.  They 
probably  have  a  "  local  sign,"  dependent  on  the  part 
of  the  brain  concerned  ;  but  it  is  likely  that  motor 
centres  give  the  most  significant  differentia.  A  per- 
ception may,  as  a  rule,  be  more  intense,  definite,  and 
complete  than  an  image,  as  the  result  of  more  in- 
tense, definite,  and  complete  stimulation  in  the  case 
of  the  afferent  currents  from  the  sense  organs. 
These  currents  are  also  likely  to  produce  more  de- 
cided invasions  of  the  train  of  ideas,  and  the  usually 
more  sudden  appearance  is  doubtless  one  of  the 
factors  giving  a  perception  its  superior  vividness. 

When,  however,  following  the  path  blazed  by 
James  and  cleared  by  Dewey  and  Mlinsterberg,  we 
approach  the  subject  from  the  side  of  the  sensori- 
motor arc,  it  appears  that  the  way  we  react  is  as 
much  a  part  of  the  psychophysical  process  as  the 
kind  of  stimulation,  and  the  motor  elements  are  as 
integral  a  part  of  the  perception  as  the  strictly  sen- 
sory elements.  The  stimuli  pouring  into  the  central 
nervous  system  from  the  extra-bodily  world  do  not 
arrive  in  order  that  we  may  perceive  them  or  may 


JAiVIES   McKEEN   CATTELL         573 

write  a  system  of  psychology  about  them,  but  in 
order  that  we  may  react  to  them.  In  our  daily  life 
we  must  continually  avoid  obstacles  and  dangers, 
must  continually  get  what  we  need  or  want.  Our 
relations  with  the  material  world  are  primarily  of 
this  kind  ;  in  the  case  of  the  lower  animals  they  are 
almost  exclusively  of  this  kind.  If  a  light  is  pre- 
sented, my  eyes  turn  toward  it ;  if  some  one  speaks 
to  me,  I  am  ready  to  answer.  The  response  is  due 
to  the  mechanism  of  tlie  nervous  system  as  or- 
ganized at  birth  and  reorganized  by  experience. 
The  organism  that  failed  to  react  in  this  way 
could  not  survive,  and  natural  selection  accounts  no 
worse  for  the  increasing  complexity  of  our  reactions 
than  for  the  increasing  complexity  of  the  organism. 
In  the  case  of  images  and  ideas,  the  motor  ele- 
ment is  not  absent,  but  it  is  less  prominent.  They 
are  less  likely  to  be  followed  by  definite  move- 
ments, which  again  give  rise  to  new  afferent  cur- 
rents with  their  accompanying  perceptions.  If  some 
one  speaks  to  me,  I  am  in  the  habit  of  answering  ; 
if  I  imagine  the  voice,  I  do  not  answer  audibly  if  at 
all.  The  liglit  I  see  is  not  necessarily  more  faint 
than  the  light  I  imagine,  but  there  is  a  difference 
in  vividness  or  liveliness,  which  can  very  well  be 
attributed  to  the  more  customary  need  to  react  and 
to  the  greater  prominence  of  the  motor  element. 
The  nervous  system  is  so  organized  that  we  react 
to  objects,  and  the  perceptions  thus  have  superior 
vividness  and  reality,  which  enable  us  under  ordi- 


574    REACTIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS 

nary  circumstances  to  distinguish  perceptions  from 
images.  Our  reactions  as  a  rule  work  and  are  use- 
ful, giving  rise  to  new  perceptions  and  new  reac- 
tions, which  also  work,  and  thus  the  material  world 
becomes  real  for  us. 

When  a  cat  sees  or  smells  a  mouse,  it  jumps  to 
seize  it,  and  the  mouse  runs  to  its  hole.  The 
motor  discharge  in  the  cerebral  centres  of  the  cat 
is  as  much  a  part  of  the  perception  of  the  mouse  or 
of  the  mouse  situation  as  are  the  incoming  currents. 
The  incoming  currents  and  the  pre-existing  struc- 
ture of  the  centres  cause  the  discharge,  and  the 
perception,  in  my  opinion,  usually  follows  the  dis- 
charge in  time.  This  time  order  I  pointed  out 
more  than  twenty  years  ago  in  the  case  of  the 
reaction-time.  Here  the  stimulus  does  not  cause 
a  perception  which  causes  a  movement,  but  the 
stimulus  and  the  pre-arranged  brain  connections 
cause  the  movement,  and  the  process  is  subse- 
quently given  in  consciousness  as  awareness  of  the 
kind  of  stimulus  and  the  kind  of  movement. 

The  anthropomorphic  cat,  if  it  catches  the  mouse, 
has  a  series  of  agreeable  experiences,  which  are  con- 
vincing proof  of  the  existence  of  a  real  mouse  and 
of  a  physical  and,  for  it,  rational  world.  When 
the  mouse  situation  again  occurs,  the  cat  has  a 
lively  and  vivid  perception  of  a  real  mouse.  But 
while  the  cat  is  waiting  for  the  mouse  to  turn  up,  it 
may  have  memories  and  images.  It  does  not  jump 
at  these,  because  its  nervous  system  is  not  made 


JAMES   McKEEN   CATTELL         575 

that  way.     It  is  the  incoming  currents  that  arouse 
the  suitable  responses.     Centrally  excited  processes 
do  not  and  can  not  excite  the  same  responses,  for 
in  this  case  the  animal  would  not  survive.     It  is 
only  a  mad  cat   that   may  jump  at  an  imaginary 
mouse,  and  for   it  the  jumped-at  mouse  becomes 
real.     It  should,  of  course,  be  remembered  that  in- 
hibitions are  as  integral  parts  of  the  motor  processes 
as  discharges.     The  cat  waiting  for  the  mouse  to 
come  within  reach  is  all  muscular  tension,  which  is 
part   of  the   vivid  perception   of  the   approaching 
mouse.     It   appears   indeed   that   consciousness   is 
related  to  inhibition  in  a  peculiarly  intimate  fashion. 
The  character  and  validity  of  our  perceptions  are 
prescribed  by  the  motor  responses  no  less  than  by 
the  incoming  currents.     Thus  the  visual  world  is 
one  in  which  we  can  do  things  rather  than  one  in 
which  we  simply  see  objects.     As  I  go  forward  to 
shake  hands  with  a  friend  and  approach  from  a  dis- 
tance of  six  feet  to  three,  the  image  on  the  retina 
becomes  twice  as  large,  but  there  is  no  change  in 
the  apparent  size  of  the  man.     A  table  has  a  rect- 
angular top,  from  whatever  point  of  view  1  look 
at  it.     I  know  that  in  the  retinal  image  two  of  the 
angles  are  acute  and  two  are  obtuse,  but  I  hesitate 
and  make  a  geometrical  construction  before  I  know 
which  is  which.     Most  people  would   not  suspect 
that  if  the  arm  is  held  at  full  length,  the  tip  of  the 
little  finger  will  more  than  cover  the  sun.     We  have 
this  year  made  in  our  laboratory  some  experiments 


576     REACTIONS  AND   PERCEPTIONS 

which  measure  the  extreme  extent  of  our  inability 
to  compare  the  sizes  of  retinal  images  as  such.  Inci- 
dentally I  may  remark  that  the  indifference  of  the 
actual  retinal  images  seems  to  account  for  the  ordi- 
nary optical  illusions.  A  slight  clue,  such  as  arrested 
movements  of  the  eyes  or  possible  perspective,  may 
readily  distort  size  or  direction. 

Experiments  of  my  own,  which  I  described 
several  years  ago,  give  a  somewhat  striking  demon- 
stration of  the  extent  to  which  perceptions  are 
shaped  by  the  requirements  of  motor  response. 
Curiously  enough,  it  had  not  been  remarked  that 
in  the  vision  of  daily  life  objects  are  presented  to 
the  eye  one  after  another,  but  are  perceived  side  by 
side.  As  I  look  about  the  room,  first  one  object 
and  then  another  falls  on  the  area  of  distinct  vision, 
but  I  see  the  objects,  not  one  after  another  at  the 
same  place,  but  side  by  side  in  the  spatial  arrange- 
ment in  which  I  should  find  them,  and  covering  a 
field  in  which  it  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  see 
simultaneously. 

The  results  are  similar  if  the  eyes  are  still  and 
the  objects  are  moved  over  the  retina.  If  I  look 
through  a  window  one  centimetre  square,  and  be- 
hind it  three  centimetre  squares  separated  by  centi- 
metre spaces  are  passed,  I  do  not  see  one  square 
after  the  other,  but  the  three  squares  side  by  side, 
somewhat  crowded  together  and  blurred,  but  two 
or  three  times  as  large  as  the  window  through 
which  they  are  seen.     If  in  this  way  first  red  is 


JAMES   McKEEN   CATTELL         577 

exhibited  and  then  green,  we  do  not  see  first  red 
and  then  green,  but  red,  white,  and  green,  side  by- 
side  and  covering  a  field  several  times  as  large  as 
the  retinal  image.  We  perceive  as  a  spatial  con- 
tinuum what  is  a  time  series  in  the  physical  world, 
in  the  incoming  currents  and  in  the  brain  centres. 

In  these  cases  each  perceives  the  same  physical 
stimulus  in  his  owti  way.  He  may  see  the  green 
above  the  red,  or  conversely ;  the  green  within  the 
red,  or  conversely ;  bars  of  red  and  green  arranged 
vertically  or  horizontally,  etc.  The  first  time  that 
a  stimulus  is  presented  to  an  observer,  he  ordinarily 
has  only  a  vague  perception.  The  same  stimulus 
after  sev^eral  trials  gives  a  clear  perception,  which 
thereafter  tends  to  remain  the  same  for  the  same 
observer,  though  likely  to  be  very  different  for  dif- 
ferent observers.  When  the  actual  physical  stimu- 
lus is  explained  to  observ^ers,  some  of  them  see  it  as 
before,  others  quite  differently.  All  of  which  shows 
that  the  attitude  of  the  observer  is  as  integral  a 
part  of  perceptions  as  the  incoming  nervous  cur- 
rents, and  that  perceptions  are  prescribed  by 
reactions. 

It  is  sight  and  kina?sthetic  sensations  which,  in 
the  main,  give  us  our  spatial  and  material  world. 
In  sight,  the  movements  of  the  eyes,  head,  and 
body  are  of  extreme  importance.  AVe  have  with 
these  senses  immediate  and  constant  reactions  to 
stimuli.  Hearing  is  less  objective,  owing  to  the 
loss  of  movable  ears,  but  it  is  still  rather  intimately 

37 


578    REACTIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS 

connected  with  movement,  especially  on  the  side 
of  time  correspondence.  SmeU,  tasLe,  and  organic 
sensations  have  decreasing  objectivity.  The  re- 
actions occur  mainly  within  the  body,  and  as  we 
have  the  same  body  always  with  us,  we  regard  it  as 
part  of  ourselves  rather  than  of  the  material  world. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  body  known  by  kin^es- 
thetic  and  organic  sensations ;  the  seen  body, 
which  alters  its  relation  to  the  visual  world,  is  more 
likely  to  be  regarded  as  part  of  it. 

Kinsesthetic  perceptions  and  images  have  a  pe- 
culiar position.  We  can  form  an  image  of  a  light 
or  sound,  but  we  cannot  directly  produce  an  ob- 
jective light  or  sound ;  we  can,  however,  directly 
produce  movements.  It  may  not  be  clear  in  a 
given  case  whether  we  have  an  image  of  a  move- 
ment or  have  actually  produced  a  movement  or  a 
partially  inhibited  impulse  to  make  the  movement. 
It  appears  to  me  that  in  so  far  as  my  thoughts  are 
in  sensory  terms,  they  are  mainly  in  the  form  of 
motor  speech.  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
articulation  or  the  impulse  to  articulate  actually 
takes  place,  and  that  it  is  not  a  matter  of  images 
at  all,  but  of  this  I  am  not  sure.  Now  the  diffi- 
culty of  discriminating  between  kinsesthetic  percep- 
tions and  images  seems,  to  a  slight  degree  at  least, 
to  support  the  view  that  it  is  the  motor  element 
which  distinguishes  sights  and  sounds  from  visual 
and  auditory  images. 

Pleasures  and  pains  are  sui  generis  like  colors  and 


JAMES   McKEEN   CATTELL         579 

sounds.  They  probably  have  the  teleological  si<^riif- 
icance  usually  attributed  to  them ;  in  any  case, 
they  tend,  as  a  rule,  to  accompany,  respectively, 
those  performances  that  are  beneficial  or  harmful 
to  the  organism  or  to  the  race.  They  seem  to 
accompany  both  incoming  and  outgoing  currents, 
and  they  are  v^ery  vivid  and  real,  but  are  not  objec- 
tified. This  seems,  in  part  at  least,  to  be  accounted 
for  by  the  fact  that  the  senses  which  give  us  most 
knowledge  of  the  physical  world  give  us  the  least 
pleasure-pain,  and  conversely.  Tiie  organic  sen- 
sations give  us  no  knowledge  of  the  extra-bodily 
world  and  but  little  of  what  happens  within  the 
body,  but  the  hedonic  elements  are  constant  and 
may  be  intense.  Images  of  pleasures  and  pains  are 
lacking  or  obscure,  and  this  holds  also  —  at  least  in 
my  own  case  —  for  organic  sensations,  smells,  and 
tastes.  It  seems  that  the  sensori-motor  arcs  begin- 
ning and  ending  in  the  physical  world  give  reality 
to  our  perception  of  objects,  and  the  arcs  begin- 
ning and  ending  within  the  body  give  reahty  to 
ourselves. 

In  the  case  of  the  emotions  the  cerebral  commo- 
tion, as  James  has  so  brilliantly  argued,  is  probably 
chiefiy  due  to  the  excitation  of  bodily  changes  by 
the  object  and  the  discharges  to  the  brain  from 
the  bodily  excitation.  It  is  not  an  essential  part 
of  the  theory  that  the  emotion  should  be  correlated 
only  with  the  afferent  currents  ;  indeed,  the  theory 
is  apparently  strengthened  if  we  assume  that  feel- 


580    REACTIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS 

ings  and  emotions  are  associated  with  those  cerebral 
conditions  which  discharge  into  the  viscera,  etc., 
as  well  as  with  the  conditions  excited  by  afferent 
currents  from  the  inner  body.  In  Dewey's  words, 
the  emotional  excitement  represents  the  tension  of 
stimulus  and  response.  It  appears  to  me  that  the 
incoming  currents  and  the  discharges  which  lead 
to  definite  muscular  reactions  give  reality  to  the 
perceptions,  and  the  incoming  currents  and  the 
discharges  to  the  inner  organs  with  the  vaguer 
muscular  contractions  give  rise  to  the  emotions. 
Then  the  purposive  movements  cause  new  stimuli 
and  new  reactions  which  add  further  vividness  and 
reality  to  our  perception  of  objects,  and  the  com- 
motion within  the  body  gives  rise  to  new  excita- 
tions and  to  new  discharges  by  which  the  emotion 
is  heightened. 

The  theory  does  not  require  us  to  draw  a  definite 
line  between  perceptions  and  images.  It  is  indeed 
confirmed  by  cases  in  which  they  are  confused,  for 
this  occurs  when  the  motor  reactions  are  confused 
—  when  they  are  inhibited  or  are  excessive.  In 
sleep,  in  reverie,  in  some  forms  of  hypnotism,  in- 
toxication, and  insanity,  the  motor  reactions  are 
lacking  or  indefinite.  In  these  cases  there  are 
dreams,  visions,  and  hallucinations.  We  do  not 
respond  to  the  objects  of  the  real  world,  and  the 
distinctions  between  objects  and  ideas,  between 
perceptions  and  imaginings,  are  obscured  or  obliter- 
ated.    As  a  man  falls  asleep,  he  becomes  passive, 


JAMES  McKEEN  CATTELL         581 

he  does  not  look  or  listen,  and  gradually  his  imagery 
becomes  visions  and  dreams.  In  slight  delirium  or 
opium  intoxication,  if  the  patient  arouses  himself 
and  responds  to  the  environment  the  visions  dis- 
appear, but  return  as  soon  as  he  relapses  into  inac- 
tion. 1  made  a  long  while  ago  some  experiments 
with  hashish.  Under  the  influence  of  this  drug 
the  subject  may  relapse  into  a  passive  condition  in 
which  time  becomes  endlessly  long,  space  endlessly 
extended,  and  curious  hallucinations  occur.  But 
if  he  gets  up  and  walks  about,  looks  and  listens, 
the  hallucinations  practically  disappear.  In  hyp- 
notism the  subject  becomes  passive,  he  can  be 
made  cataleptic,  his  movements  are  suggested  to 
him  instead  of  being  normal  responses  to  the 
environment.  Artificial  passivity  is  a  prominent 
factor  in  the  trances  of  the  mystics  and  of  the 
eastern  yoga.  In  melancholia  the  failure  of  ade- 
quate motor  responses  precedes  the  hallucinations. 
On  the  other  hand,  objects  and  images  are 
equally  likely  to  be  confused  when  the  motor 
reactions  are  excessive  or  unnatural.  It  is  when 
the  girl  passes  the  churchyard  at  night,  starting 
at  every  sight  and  sound,  that  she  sees  the  tomb- 
stone as  a  ghost.  In  mania  and  in  some  phases  of 
hysteria  and  delirium,  the  movements  are  uncon- 
trolled and  there  are  delusions  and  hallucinations. 
In  the  dancing  mania  and  other  psychological  epi- 
demics, in  the  camp-meeting  revivals  and  the  rest, 
the  excessive   and  irrelevant  movements  may  be 


582    REACTIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS 

regarded  as  the  cause  rather  than  as  the  effect  of 
the  mental  disintegration.  Rhythmic  movements 
are  in  a  way  extra-natural,  not  representing  normal 
response  to  stimuli ;  they  are  a  common  method 
of  producing  ecstasy  and  abnormal  mental  states 
with  hallucinations  and  the  like.  In  savage  rites 
and  religious  manias  we  have  these  in  a  crude 
form.  In  dancing  and  in  singing,  in  music  and  in 
poetry,  in  oratory  and  in  the  intoned  church  serv- 
ice, we  have  them  in  more  refined  fashion  ;  and 
we  may  regard  the  rhythmic  motor  impulses  as 
one  of  the  causes  of  the  slight  intoxication,  the 
heightened  emotional  sensibility  and  loss  of  reality 
of  the  material  world  which  then  occur.  I  have 
myself  lost  self-consciousness  with  extraordinary 
completeness  when  playing  football.  Every  muscle 
of  the  body  is  in  action  or  in  a  state  of  unstable 
equilibrium,  and  the  consciousness  of  a  distinction 
between  one's  self  and  the  rest  of  the  world  com- 
pletely disappears.  Something  of  the  same  kind  to 
a  lesser  degree  still  occurs  when  I  play  tennis  or 
swim  in  the  sea. 

It  may  further  be  noted  that  in  many  of  the 
cases  cited  above  we  have  first  excessive  or  un- 
natural motor  discharge,  followed  by  lack  of 
response.  Typical  but  extreme  cases  are  the  epi- 
leptic fit — a  violent  explosion  followed  by  coma  — 
or  mania  followed  by  dementia.  In  intoxication 
the  first  symptom  is  the  weakening  of  normal  in- 
hibition, the  loosened  tongue,  the  taking  of  one 


JAMES  McKEEN  CATTELL    583 

more  glass,  etc.  This  is  followed  by  disintegration 
of  the  normal  reflexes  —  staggering,  thick  speech, 
double  vision.     Finally  coma  supervenes. 

It  is  of  course  possible  that  in  all  these  cases  the 
mental  changes  may  not  be  due  to  the  motor  dis- 
turbances, but  that  they  have  a  common  cause. 
Fatigue,  fasting,  abnormal  blood  supply,  a  cerebral 
poison  or  emotional  excitement  may  be  regarded  as 
the  cause  both  of  the  excessive  or  lacking  motor 
responses  and  of  the  mental  disorganization.  But 
while  it  is  not  necessary  to  exclude  other  factors, 
the  motor  theory  seems  to  be  a  simple  and  adequate 
explanation.  It  accounts  for  these  disturbances, 
but  does  not  depend  on  them  for  its  verification. 

We  cannot  separate  images  from  perceptions. 
Images  are  revivals  of  past  sensations,  and  percep- 
tions are  mainly  supplied  by  conditions  of  the  cen- 
tral nervous  system.  Images  and  perceptions  are 
equally  the  result  of  brain  changes,  which  are  them- 
selves part  of  the  world's  material  system.  But 
the  brain  changes  which  are  excited  from  wuthin 
are  less  likely  to  result  in  motor  discharges  than 
those  w^hich  form  parts  of  sensori-motor  arcs.  This 
is  necessary  if  the  organism  is  to  survive  and  pros- 
per. The  more  pronounced  motor  elements  of  the 
sensori-motor  arcs  are  represented  by  superior  vivid- 
ness in  perceptions  as  compared  with  images.  This 
appears  to  be  at  least  one  of  the  factors  enabling  us 
to  construct  the  world  in  which  we  live,  and  the 
statement  appears  to  be  a  step,  however  small,  in 


584    REACTIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS 

the  direction  of  passing  from  metaphysics  to  science, 
from  epistemology  to  psychology,  from  theory  of 
knowledge  to  knowledge  of  facts. 

It  is  a  discovery  of  natural  science  that  each  of  us 
remains  within  his  own  experience.  This  experi- 
ence is,  however,  such  that  it  leads  us  to  live  in  the 
world  of  common  sense  and  perhaps  later  in  the 
world  of  natural  science.  I  do  not  see  why  episte- 
mology or  metaphysics  should  want  to  come  in  here 
as  something  super-psychological  or  meta-scientific. 
We  can  as  a  logical  entertainment  construct  queer 
worlds  ;  but  none  of  these  is  the  world  in  which  we 
live.  We  can  fancy  a  world  of  Arthurian  knights, 
or  of  Arabian  nights,  or  of  metaphysical  twilight, 
but  those  who  should  act  as  though  they  lived  in 
such  worlds  would  find  themselves  in  those  parts  of 
the  real  world  known  as  prisons  or  insane  asylums. 
So  long  as  the  world  of  common  sense  and  natural 
science  continues  to  honor  the  drafts  that  we  draw 
on  it,  we  have  satisfactory  evidence  of  its  solvency. 
This,  I  trust,  is  sound  pragmatism. 


PRAG^VIATIC   SUBSTITUTE  FOR 
FREE   WILL 


A   PRAGMATIC   SUBSTITUTE   FOR 
FREE   WILL 

By  Edward  L.  Thorndike 

In  his  recent  lectures  on  Pragmatism  Professor 
James  emphasizes  the  fact  that  the  only  issue  of 
consequence  in  the  free-will  controversy  is  me- 
liorism, for  which  indeterminism  gives  possibility.* 
It  has  perhaps  not  been  clearly  understood  that 
meliorism  is  possible  without  the  presupposition 
that  the  result  of  any  condition  of  nature  is  inde- 
terminate, —  without  any  need  of  our  going  against, 
or  even  beyond,  the  scientific,  matter-of-fact  point 
of  view  and  habit  of  interpreting  the  universe.  It 
seems  worth  while,  then,  to  show  that  the  natural 
constitution  of  the  world  makes  meliorism  possible, 
and,  in  fact,  necessary. 

If  the  interpretation  of  human  and  animal  be- 
havior to  be  offered  in  the  present  paper  is  true,  no 
one  needs  to  deny  the  accepted  doctrine  of  the  con- 
servation of  energy  or  to  abate  a  jot  his  allegiance 
to  brain  physiology  or  to  swap  the  logic  of  science 
for  that  of  hope  in  order  to  justify  the  faith  that  we 
make   the   world   better.     Indeed,  the   one   thing 

•  "Pragmatism."  pp.  118-121. 

587 


588    A  SUBSTITUTE   FOR  FREE   WILL 

which  can  justify  that  faith  is  precisely  brain- 
physiology  as  revealed  by  animal  behavior. 

What  is  meant  in  the  discussion  that  follows  will 
be  abundantly  clear  to  a  matter-of-fact  mind  that 
interprets  the  terms  used  by  their  contexts,  but,  in 
case  these  terms  may  have  been  appropriated  by 
philosophers  for  certain  special  meanings,  I  now 
define  them.  I  shall  use  satisfying  or  satisfiers  to 
mean  those  states  of  affairs  which,  in  the  case  of  us 
human  beings,  are  welcomed,  cherished,  preferred 
to  exist  rather  than  to  not  exist,  and  which,  in  the 
case  of  animals  in  general,  the  organism  does 
nothing  to  avoid,  often  doing  such  things  as  attain 
and  preserve  them.  I  shall  use  discomforting  or 
annoying  or  trouhlers  to  mean  those  states  of  affairs 
which,  in  the  case  of  us  human  beings,  are  repelled, 
disliked,  preferred  to  not  exist  rather  than  to  exist, 
and  which,  in  the  case  of  animals  in  general,  the 
organism  commonly  avoids  and  abandons.  To 
satisfy  will  mean  to  be  or  to  make  to  be  a  satisfier; 
satisfyingness  will  mean  the  quality  of  being  a  sat- 
isfier ;  to  annoy  or  to  trouble  and  intolerability  or 
annoyingness  will  have  corresponding  meanings.^ 

By  meliorism  is  meant  the  hypothesis  that  the 
world  can  increase  in  satisfyingness  or  decrease  in 
annoyingness  or  both  to  the  individual  or  group  in 

*  Satisfying  is,  of  course,  not  a  synonjTn  for  pleasure-giving ;  nor  is  dis- 
comforting a  synonym  for  painful.  States  of  affairs  that  do  not  give  any  pleas- 
ure in  its  ordinary  sense  may  be  highly  satisfying,  and  certain  pleasures 
intolerable.  A  similar  difference  exists  between  the  discomforting  and  the 
painful. 


EDWARD   L.  THORNDIKE  589 

question.  Such  changes  I  shall  call  briefly  changes 
for  the  better.  The  group  in  question  in  this  dis- 
cussion will  be  the  human  species.  That  is,  con- 
cretely I  shall  try  to  prove  that  the  behavior  of 
human  beings  changes  the  world  for  the  better  for 
them  and  for  future  human  beings.  If  their  be- 
havior has  this  influence,  meliorism  is  possible,  and 
unless  the  world  under  other  influences  changes 
enough  to  counterbalance  it,  meliorism  is  assured. 

The  first  and  also  the  essential  part  of  the  argu- 
ment is  to  prove  that  the  behavior  of  a  man  to  the 
same  situation  (excluding  the  man's  nervous  system 
from  the  requirement  of  sameness)  becomes  as  a 
rule  more  and  more  productive  of  the  satisfying 
and  less  of  the  discomforting  as  the  situation 
recurs. 

This  statement  will  not  seem  to  most  of  my 
readers  to  need  proof.  They  will,  quite  properly, 
regard  it  as  a  paraphrase  of  the  statement  that  man 
modifies  his  behavior  so  as  to  adapt  himself  better 
to  his  environment.  They  will  say  that  nobody 
doubts  this,  that  every  hour's  life  proves  that  men 
learn,  that  the  action  of  men  in  business  and  indus- 
try and  government  and  the  whole  system  of  in- 
centives and  deterrents  in  homes,  schools,  and 
stiites  prove  that  men's  behavior  is  modified  in 
favor  of  the  satisfying,  that  they  act  so  as  to  get 
what  they  want.  They  will  accept  it  as  a  true 
statement,  but  neglect  it  as  a  rather  insignificant 
one.     I,  on  the  contrary,  am  much  concerned  to 


590    A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE   WILL 

make  sure  that  it  is  true,  being  confident  that  if  it 
is  true,  nothing  else  in  the  world  is  so  significant. 

For,  under  certain  conditions  of  social  organiza- 
tion, the  success  of  men  in  modifying  their  behavior 
so  as  to  make  the  same  external  situation  more 
productive  of  the  satisfying  to  them  singly  means 
an  increase  in  the  satisfying  for  the  whole  contem- 
poraneous group.  And  under  certain  conditions 
of  reproduction  and  of  similarity  in  the  wants  of 
successive  generations  of  men,  this  success  means 
an  increase  in  the  satisfying  for  the  whole  group's 
offspring,  that  is,  for  the  race  in  the  future.  These 
conditions  can  be  shown  to  exist.  Moreover,  the 
nature  and  amount  of  man's  power  to  modify  be- 
havior in  favor  of  the  satisfying  are  definite  and 
ascertainable,  so  that  the  meliorism  which  follows 
therefrom  is  entirely  independent  of  the  supernatu- 
ral; is  intelligible,  free  from  vagueness,  proper  to 
serve  as  a  basis  for  practice;  is  even  measurable  in 
amount.  It  is  because  human  modifiability  in  favor 
of  the  satisfying  guarantees  meliorism  to  the  species, 
a  meliorism,  too,  which  can  be  understood  and 
reckoned  with  as  we  understand  the  growth  of  corn 
or  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  that  it  seems  to  me 
the  most  significant  thing  in  the  world,  if  true. 

In  human  practice  its  truth  has  been  assumed  in 
much  the  same  way  as  that  of  the  existence  of  other 
minds  or  of  the  value  of  happiness.  In  psychologi- 
cal theory  little  attention  has  been  paid  to  it,  partly 
because  the  problem  of  how  we  come  to  perceive 


EDWARD   L.  THORNDIKE  591 

the  external  world  has  been  so  emphasized  and 
partly  because  psycliologists  have  not  fully  realized 
that  it  is  as  truly  influential  in  every  case  of  learn- 
ing, in  the  most  subtle  reasonings  and  appreciations, 
as  in  obvious  motor  responses  such  as  opening  a 
door  or  managing  a  spoon.  Rut  no  one  has  ever 
denied  it  outright 

Appearances  surely  are  enormously  in  favor  of 
modifiability  in  favor  of  the  satisfying,  but  there  is 
one  notable  difficulty,  that  of  conceiving  any  physio- 
logical processes  paralleling  the  satisfying  and  dis- 
comforting aspects  of  states  of  affairs  and  capable 
of  strengthening  and  weakening  the  conditions 
which  preceded  them.  If  one  could  know  or  even 
surmise  how^  for  instance,  the  discomfort  of  the  blow 
receiv^ed  by  a  jumping  dog  makes  him  less  likely  to 
jump  again  in  the  same  situation,  one  would  justly 
feel  much  safer  in  believing  that  it  did.  Instead, 
therefore,  of  adding  to  the  bulk  of  evidence  that 
neurone  connections  are  modified  by  the  results  to 
the  organism  that  follow,  I  shall  try  to  strengthen 
the  proof  by  a  provisional  hypothesis  as  to  how  they 
are  so  modified.  This  hypothesis  is,  very  baldly, 
as  follows : 

1.  On  its  physiological  side  behavior  in  the 
higher  animals  is  a  struggle  for  existence  amongst 
neurone  connections.  The  formation  of  a  habit 
means  the  survival  of  one  connection,  the  elimina- 
tion of  a  futile  response  to  a  given  situation  means 
the  death  of  another. 


592    A  SUBSTITUTE   FOR  FREE   WILL 

2.  The  main  functions  of  the  hfe  of  a  neurone 
are  nutrition,  conduction,  and  movement. 

3.  The  modifiability  of  an  animal,  that  is,  the 
elimination  and  survival  of  connections  between  its 
neurones,  is  due  to  the  third  function  only,  to  the 
neurones'  movements,  neurone  connections  equalling 
certain  arrangements  in  space  of  the  terminal  proc- 
esses of  the  neurones. 

4.  A  modifiable  neurone  behaves  in  its  move- 
ments essentially  as  do  the  unicellular  organisms. 
When  its  life  activities,  other  than  movements,  are 
going  on  w^ell,  it  continues  whatever  movement  ac- 
tivity it  is  engaged  in  ;  when  its  life  processes  are 
interfered  with,  it  makes  one  or  more  of  the  re- 
sponses to  such  interference  provided  in  its  reper- 
toire. The  action  system  of  a  neurone  is  probably 
restricted  to  the  terminals  of  its  processes  and  its 
repertoire  is  probably  as  narrow  as  an  amoeba's. 

5.  Activity  in  conduction  puts  a  neurone  in  a 
physiological  state  favorable  to  activity  in  nutrition, 
and  this  state  in  turn  provokes  a  physiological  state 
favorable  to  activity  in  movement. 

An  attempt  to  support  these  five  hypotheses  by 
evidence  is  beyond  the  purpose  of  this  article,  which 
is  only  to  describe  a  mechanism  capable  of  produc- 
ing behavior  in  favor  of  the  satisfying,  not  to  prove 
that  just  that  mechanism  does  exist.  Nor  could 
anything  even  approximating  a  proof  of  them  be 
offered.  The  hypotheses  are  not,  however,  wildly 
extravagant  devices  sought  out  simply  because  they 


EDWARD   L.  TIIORNDIKE  593 

fit  the  case  of  behavior  alone.  That  movement 
occurs  in  the  ends  of  the  processes  of  a  neurone  is 
held  to  be  highly  probable  by  physiologists.  That 
the  formation  of  habits  concerns  the  movement 
function  rather  than  the  conduction  function  of  a 
neurone  has  some  slight  direct  support  in  the  great 
resistance  to  ftitigue  of  the  conduction  function. 
For  the  neurone  to  maintain  in  a  specialized  form 
the  behavior  of  unicellular  animals  is  at  least  more 
probable  from  present  knowledge  than  for  it  to 
behave  in  any  other  one  way.  That  the  nutrition 
function  will  be  made  excitable  by  exercise  of  the 
conduction  function  is  only  an  application  to  the 
neurone  of  one  general  physiological  fact,  and  that 
the  neurone,  thus  made  hungry,  will  be  more  easily 
excited  to  movement,  is  only  a  similar  application 
of  another. 

These  five  h}^otheses,  together  with  accepted 
facts  of  general  physiology,  will  giv^e  a  sufficient  ex- 
planation of  how  behavior  is  modified  permanently 
in  favor  of  the  satisfying  provided  some  adequate 
connection  can  be  shown  to  exist  between  the 
satisfying  and  annoying  and  the  maintenance  or 
depression  of  the  life  activities  of  the  neurones 
other  than  movement.  It  is  necessary  to  find  for 
the  satisfyingness  and  annoyingness  physiological 
equivalents  such  as  may  enter  as  components  into 
any  activity-complex  whatever  of  the  modifiable 
neurones.  For  we  know  that  in  human  life  almost 
any  state  of  affairs  whatever  may  take  on  and  put 

38 


594    A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE  WILL 

off  this  extra  quality  of  satisfying  or  annoying. 
The  only  further  necessity  is  that  these  two  physi- 
ological parallels  should  connect  with  a  raising  and 
lowering  of  the  general  offering  of  nutrition  to  the 
neurones.  My  suggestions  will  again  be  made  as 
bald  affirmatives. 

6.  The  physiological  parallel  of  the  discomfort- 
ing is  excessive  stimulation  to  conduction  in  a 
neurone  or  neurones,  meaning  by  excessive  more 
stimulation  than  is  at  the  time  readily  conducted  off 
to  other  neurones,  a  choked- up  condition  of  the 
neurone,  as  it  were.  This  excessive  stimulation 
arises  either  from  too  much  ingress  of  stimulation 
or  too  little  outlet. 

Pains  and  the  thwarting  of  instinctive  tendencies 
(and  other  tendencies  derived  therefrom)  are  the 
chief  annoyers.  The  excessive  stimulation  hypoth- 
esis fits  both  very  well,  for  the  latter  are  almost 
certainly  represented  physiologically  by  a  pent-up 
condition  of  the  discharge  in  the  neurones  concerned, 
and  the  one  thing  we  know  about  the  physiological 
parallel  of  pain  is  that  in  many  cases  very  great 
stimulation  of  any  neurone  is  that  parallel  or  is 
intimately  allied  to  it.  The  difficult  cases  for  the 
hypothesis  are  the  semi-agsthetic  disHkes,  the  an- 
noyingness  of  certain  chords,  colors,  tastes,  and  the 
like  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  are  paralleled  by 
only  moderate  stimulation  of  any  neurones.  It  is 
to  be  noted,  however,  that  many  of  these  are  cases 
of  acquired  dislike  through  the  association  of  the 


EDWARD   L.  THORNDIKE  595 

stimulation  with  some  typical  pain  or  thwarting, 
and  that  others  may  be  explained  by  the  fact  that 
the  mere  unaccustomedness  may  make  a  stimula- 
tion which  is  in  itself  moderate  in  amount  be 
excessive  to  the  neurones  in  question.  Hence  the 
enormous  influence  of  social  tradition  and  indi- 
vidual experience  in  deciding  which  musical  chords, 
which  foods  and  drinks,  which  clothes  and  customs, 
shall  be  disliked. 

7.  The  physiological  parallel  of  the  satisfying 
is  normal  stimulation  to  conduction  in  neurones, 
meaning  by  normal  mch  stimulation  as  is  at  the  time 
readilij  conducted  off  to  other  neurones. 

In  favor  of  such  a  parallelism  stand  the  facts  that 
mental  and  motor  activity  are  jjer  se  satisfying, 
that  the  essence  of  the  desirability  of  play  of  all 
sorts  is  richness  of  activity  with  freedom  from 
inhibitions,  and  that  the  most  pleasurable  sensations 
lose  their  satisfyingness  if  too  intense  or  too  pro- 
longed. The  difficult  cases  for  it  are  certain  sen- 
sations, for  instance,  those  connected  with  eating, 
which  seem  to  be  much  more  satisfying  than  other 
sensations  presumably  involving  equally  normal 
stimulations.  Such  cases  are  perhaps  explainable 
on  the  ground  that  they  \nvo\\e  a  greater  number 
of  neurones,  or  by  the  not  unlikely  secondary  hy- 
pothesis that  the  degree  of  satisfyingness  of  normal 
stimulation  varies  amongst  neurones,  being,  for 
example,  greater  in  the  neurones  concerned  with 
tastes  than  in  those  concerned  with  temperature. 


596    A  SUBSTITUTE   FOR  FREE   WILL 

8.  Over-stimulation  of  any  neurone  group  de- 
creases, and  normal  stimulation  increases  the  tem- 
porary supply  of  food  to  the  nervous  system  as  a 
whole. 

This  feature  of  my  explanation  is  the  weakest  in 
direct  evidential  support.  Not  much  can  be  said  in 
its  favor  except  that  there  is  nothing  against  it,  that 
such  an  arrangement  would  be  easy  to  evolve  and 
would  be  so  useful  as  to  be  almost  surely  selected 
for  survival,  and  that  it  would  account  for  the  weak- 
ening effect  of  pains  and  worry  upon  the  nervous 
system  in  general  and  the  opposite  total  healthy 
tonus  resulting  from  sensory  pleasures  and  other 
satisfiers  as  well  as  for  the  facts  of  modifiability. 

The  significance  of  these  hypotheses  about  the 
physiology  of  behavior  will  be  clear  to  students  of 
concrete  cases  of  human  and  animal  learning,  but 
for  convenience  I  give  the  facts  for  the  fundamen- 
tal types  of  adaptive  modifiability. 

Case  I.  A  situation  arouses  a  response  which 
brings  a  satisfying  state  of  affairs.  The  probability 
of  a  similar  response  to  the  situation  in  the  future 
is  increased  up  to  some  physiological  limit. 

Let  N  equal  the  neurone  action  corresponding  to 
the  situation,  S.  N  arouses  nj,  leading  to  the  act 
Hi,  which  brings  the  satisfying  situation  Ss.  What- 
ever movement-action  existed  to  cause  the  conduc- 
tion to  pass  by  N-nj,  is  maintained,  since  the 
conditions  of  food  supply  due  to  Ss  favor  the  life- 
processes.     The  Nui  neurones  are  more  influenced 


EDWARD   L.  THORNDIKE  597 

by  the  hei<^htened  food  supply  than  other  neurones, 
because  they  have  recently  been  in  conduction 
activity.  Any  later  movement-action  in  the  Nuj 
neurones  will  then  have  as  its  starting-point  the 
position  taken  up  in  this  experience  rather  than  the 
average  previous  position. 

Case  II.  A  situation  arouses  a  response  which 
brings  an  annoying  state  of  affairs.  The  probability 
of  a  similar  response  in  the  future  is  lessened. 

N  here  arouses  Ug  leading  to  the  act  a^,  which 
brings  the  discomforting  situation,  Su.  The  dimi- 
nution in  food  supply  due  to  Su  interferes  with 
the  life-processes  of  the  Xuo  neurones.  Whatever 
movement-action  existed  to  cause  the  connection 
Nuq  is  changed  to  some  other,  if  the  neurone's 
repertoire  includes  as  a  response  to  interference  with 
its  life-processes  any  other  movement-action.  Other 
neurones  than  those  concerned  in  Xno  will  be  less 
influenced  by  the  lessened  food  supply  because  they 
have  not  so  recently  been  in  conduction  activity. 

Case  III.  A  situation  arouses  several  responses, 
one  of  which  brings  a  satisfying  result  whereas  the 
others  bring  annoying  results.  The  satisfying  re- 
sponse is  selected  by  the  forces  operativ  e  in  Case  I 
and  Case  II. 

Case  IV.  A  situation  arouses  several  responses, 
all  bringing  satisfying  results,  one  of  which  brings 
more  intense  satisftiction  than  tiie  rest.  This  re- 
sponse is  selected  because  it  implies  the  greatest 
increase  in  the  food  supply  and  so  the  strongest  ten- 


598    A  SUBSTITUTE   FOR  FREE   WILL 

dency  for  the  neurones  concerned  in  the  connection 
to  persist  in  the  movement-activity  producing  the 
connection. 

Case  V.  A  situation  arouses  several  responses  all 
bringing  annoying  results,  one  of  which  brings  the 
least  annoying  results.  Relatively  to  the  others  it 
will  be  selected,  because  the  movement-actions  con- 
cerned with  the  others  will  be  checked  more  rapidly 
and  more  vigorously. 

Professor  Jennings  has  outlined  a  physiological 
explanation  of  adaptive  modifiability  which  is,  or 
at  least  seems,  simpler  than  the  one  just  described. 
Anyone  who  is  interested  not  only  in  meliorism  as 
a  general  fact,  but  also  in  the  concrete  mechanisms 
which  account  for  it,  should  study  his  account  ^  in 
detail.     Its  general  features  are  : 

(1)  That  when  the  life-processes  of  dn  organism 
are  progressing  well,  whatever  behavior  is  going  on, 
continues  to  go  on. 

(2)  That  interference  with  the  life-processes  pro- 
duces change  in  behavior. 

(3)  That,  of  these  changes,  the  one  that  puts  an 
end  to  the  interference  is  selected  for  survival  at  the 
time  by  (1)  and  (2)  and  for  superior  survival  in  the 
future  by  the  law  of  the  resolution  of  physiological 
states,  which  is  that  "  when  a  certain  physiological 
state  has  been  resolved,  through  the  action  of  an 
external  agent  or  otherwise,  into  a  second  physio- 
logical state,  this  resolution  becomes  easier,  so  that 

•  "  The  Behavior  of  the  Lower  Organisms,"  Part  III. 


EDWARD   L.  TIIORNDIKE  599 

in  the  course  of  time  it  takes  place  quickly  and 
spontaneously,"  so  that  a  series  of  states  A— >B-^C 
— >D  comes  to  replace  itself  by  A— >^D/ 

It  seems  to  the  \vriter  necessary  to  go  beyond 
Professor  Jennings's  hypothesis,  because  it  fits 
readily  only  the  secondary  case  where  the  situation 
arousing  responses  is  annoying  and  where  one  of  the 
responses  brings  a  satisfying  result  in  place  of  it,  and 
because  the  facts  summarized  in  the  law  of  resolu- 
tion seem  to  need  explanation  by  adaptive  modi- 
fiability  rather  than  to  themselves  explain  it.  At 
another  time  I  hope  to  review  his  explanation  with 
the  full  respect  and  care  which  its  attractive  sim- 
plicity and  the  masterly  experimental  work  which 
led  to  it  demand.  For  the  present  we  must  turn 
to  more  general  issues,  reminding  the  reader  that 
whatever  may  be  thought  either  of  Professor 
Jennings's  or  my  own  explanation  of  the  mechan- 
ism whereby  the  responses  made  as  the  same  ex- 
ternal situation  recurs  come  to  increasingly  satisfy, 
there  is  no  a  prior?  impossibility  in  the  performance 
of  the  task  by  some  mechanism.  Just  as  the  world 
at  large  is  so  constituted  as  to  produce  increasingly 
those  aggregations  of  matter  which  possess  life,  so 
the  nervous  system  may  be  so  constituted  as  to 
produce  increasingly  those  neural  arrangements 
which  possess  satisfyingness. 

The  next  step  in  the  argument  is  to  show  that 
behavior  in  favor  of  the  satisfying  to  an  individual 

'  "  The  Behavior  of  the  Lower  Or<,'ai)isms,"  Part  III,  pp.  289-390. 


600    A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE  WILL 

leads  to  meliorism  for  the  species.  The  facts  will  be 
clearer  if  some  attention  is  given,  first  to  an  obvious 
but  practically  very  important  extension  of  modifia- 
bility,  and  second  to  the  influence  of  behavior  in 
favor  of  the  temporarily  satisfying  upon  the  satisfy- 
ingness  of  the  individual's  entire  life  thereafter. 

In  the  discussion  so  far  the  modifications  in  be- 
havior itself  have  been  emphasized,  but  behavior 
not  only  changes  itself  for  the  better  for  the  same 
situation,  but  also  changes  the  situations  themselves 
for  the  better  for  the  same  organism.  Even  the 
lower  animals  build  nests  and  store  food  as  well  as 
form  habits ;  in  man,  of  course,  this  second  sort  of 
amelioration  by  behavior  reaches  an  enormous 
growth.  There  is,  however,  no  fundamental  differ- 
ence between  influencing  the  atoms  in  one's  body 
via  the  neurones  and  influencing  the  atoms  out  of 
the  body  via  the  neurones  and  body  too.  No  new 
analysis  is  needed  for  the  latter  case.  It  is  impor- 
tant only  because  it  is  responsible  for  a  large  part 
of  the  amelioration  of  a  single  life  taken  in  its  en- 
tirety, and  for  still  more  of  the  amelioration  of  the 
Hfe  of  the  species  by  the  behavior  of  men  singly. 

In  the  discussion  so  far  the  amelioration  has 
been  an  amelioration  of  the  results  of  one  situation, 
leaving  it  possible  that  changing  one's  life  for  the 
better  in  this  particular  might  change  it  for  the 
worse  as  a  whole.  Learning  to  quench  thirst  satis- 
factorily, for  example,  might  force  upon  one  long 
years  of  misery  as  a  drunkard.     Behavior  in  favor 


EDWARD   L.  TIIORXDIKE  GOl 

of  the  immediately  satisfying  may  and  often  is  in 
favor  of  eventual  discomfort,  either  because  tlie 
immediately  satisfying  has  such  consequences  of  it- 
self or  because  the  organism  at  a  later  condition  of 
development  is  annoyed  by  early  satisfiers.  On  the 
whole,  however,  the  satisfying  is  less  likely  to  in- 
volve secondary  annoyances  than  is  the  annoying, 
and  the  organism's  tastes  are  much  more  likely  to 
persist  with  moderate  alterations  than  to  pass  sud- 
denly into  their  opposites.  Moreover,  the  human 
intellect  can  perform  the  most  useful  service  of 
considering  a  state  of  affairs  in  its  remote  and 
future  implications  and  associating  with  it  the 
measure  of  satisfyingness  which  it  deserves  in  view 
of  these  as  well  as  of  its  immediate  effect ;  in  so  far 
as  he  has  knowledge  and  rational  tastes  man  can 
modify  his  behavior  throughout  in  favor  of  the 
satisfying  to  him  as  a  total  life.  There  are  a  few 
men  whose  behavior  as  a  whole  has,  by  stupidity 
or  bad  fortune,  increased  their  misery  as  a  whole. 
There  are  still  more  whose  behavior  has  increased 
states  of  affairs  which  others  would  be  made  mis- 
erable by,  but  which  perhaps  do  not  seriously 
annoy  them.  ( We  must  not  forget  that  there  arc 
satisfied  drunkards,  paupers,  and  invalids.)  But  by 
far  the  commonest  case  is  the  man  for  whose  total 
life  the  world  changes  for  the  better  so  far  as  it  is 
changed  by  his  own  behavior.  AVere  he  onmis- 
cient  he  would  not  have  that  cut  out  from  the 
universe ;  even  when  he  might  wish  never  to  have 


602    A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE   WILL 

been  born  he  would  still  wish  that,  were  he  to  have 
been  born,  the  old  privilege  of  modifying  behavior 
should  remain. 

The  individual's  gain  through  behavior  does  not 
involve  a  counterbalancing  loss  to  others  of  the 
same  species  for  somewhat  the  same  reasons  that 
his  temporary  gain  does  not  involve  a  total  loss  to 
him.  First,  what  is  good  for  him  as  a  total  life  is 
good  for  the  species  more  often  than  not  and, 
second,  the  species  has  power  to  weight  the  satisfy- 
ingness  of  affairs. 

There  are  no  forces  operating  absolutely  to  make 
what  satisfies  one  total  human  life  add  to  the 
annoyance  of  all  men  ;  and  there  is  one  force  oper- 
ating to  make  it  frequently  satisfy  all,  namely,  the 
similarity  among  members  of  the  same  species  with 
respect  to  the  satisfyingness  of  varying  conditions 
of  the  environment.  When  a  man  alters  nature  to 
suit  this  common  humanity  in  himself,  he  alters  it 
to  suit  the  common  weal.  For  him  to  kill  the 
tiger  in  self-preservation  preserves  life  for  all ;  for 
him  not  to  catch  the  yellow  fever  means  less  likeli- 
hood of  infection  for  every  other  man.  Even  the 
cases  which  are  quoted  to  support  the  doctrine  of 
antagonism  between  the  individual  and  the  species 
often  exemplify  our  rule ;  the  man  who  eats  the 
food  that  some  one  else  would  otherwise  have  had, 
for  instance,  really  alters  nature  for  the  common 
weal,  for  it  is  to  the  interest  of  the  human  species 
to  have  the  food  eaten  by  a  man. 


EDWARD   L.  TIIORNDIKE  603 

The  satisfaction  of  the  species  has,  too,  a  more 
direct  guarantee  than  that  which  comes  from  an 
anarchy  of  individual  impulses.  Even  before  any 
self-directed,  deliberate  social  action  appeared,  nat- 
ural selection  provided  through  the  social  instincts 
a  certain  amount  of  harmonization  of  the  satisfying 
to  men  singly  with  the  satisfying  to  men  as  a  group. 
And  in  proportion  as  intelligence  is  directed  towards 
life,  men  as  a  group  arrange  its  situations  so  as  to 
encourage  and  even  compel  such  behavior  of  men 
singly  as  shall  not  necessitate  a  common  loss.  In 
the  long  run  just  as  the  life  of  the  species  oveiTules 
any  extravagant  claims  of  the  life  of  any  individual, 
so  the  wants  of  the  species  will  and  do  overrule  any 
too  selfish  wants  of  an  individual.  When  behavior 
arises  which,  besides  satisfying  the  individual,  adds 
to  the  sum  of  satisfaction  of  the  group,  it  is  almost 
inevitably  selected  for  survival.  Parental  care  of 
offspring,  good  will  to  fellows  of  the  same  species, 
industry,  intellectual  curiosity  and  its  sequents, 
scientific  investigation  and  invention,  the  sense  of 
justice  —  these  and  many  other  traits  of  human 
nature  and  behavior  are  examples  of  the  selection 
in  the  human  species  of  tendencies  beneficent  to  it. 
.lust  as  the  forces  of  the  world  are  such  that,  in 
spite  of  the  mutual  warfare  of  species,  life  as  a 
whole  gains,  so  they  are  also  such  that,  in  spite  of 
the  mutual  warfare  of  men,  there  is  gain  for  human 
satisfaction  as  a  whole. 

It  is  conceivable  that  all  the  human  beings  alive 


604    A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE  WILL 

at  one  time  might  unite  to  exhaust  the  satisfying- 
ness  of  the  world  to  the  ruin  of  future  mankind. 
If  generation  followed  generation  by  a  simultane- 
ous birth  of  one  with  a  long  lapse  before  the  birth 
of  the  next,  and  if  human  nature  were  changed  in 
appropriate  ways,  such  a  sacrifice  of  the  future  of 
the  species  would  be  not  only  conceivable  but  also 
possible.  One  generation  in  its  prime  might  waste 
the  world's  supplies,  leave  the  next  generation  un- 
trained and  plan  a  general  destruction  of  materials, 
knowledge,  skill,  and  health.  Counting  all  the 
satisfaction  of  future  men  as  nothing  compared  to 
their  own  slightest  gratification,  one  generation  of 
a  species  could  then  wreck  its  happiness  as  they 
could  destroy  its  life. 

But,  as  things  are,  no  one  generation  of  the 
species  would  accept  such  a  doctrine  of  "  After  us, 
the  deluge,"  nor  could  it  practice  the  doctrine  if  it 
did.  Each  succeeding  generation's  happiness  is 
protected,  by  no  means  perfectly,  but  still  some- 
what, by  the  parental  feelings  and  by  the  small 
stock  of  general  good  will  to  the  species  which 
characterizes  the  previous  generation.  And  the 
future  generation  is  always  there  to  protect  itself. 
The  bond  that  unites  contemporaries  also  unites 
each  generation  with  the  next.  We  are  bound  to 
Adam  and  to  the  superman  as  we  are  bound  to  our 
next-door  neighbors.^ 

1  Whether  the  tendencies  in  behavior  which  change  the  world  for  the 
better  for  one  generation  are  transmitted  through  inheritance  to  the  next 
is,  of  course,  an  unsettled  question,  but  with  the  chances  overwhelmingly 


EDWARD   L.  TIIORNDIKE  605 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  this  protection  is  a 
restricted,  hand-to-mouth  affair,  that  the  far-off 
generation  may  lose  enormously  from  particular  acts 
of  its  forebears,  done  possibly  through  malevolence, 
often  through  indifference  to  remote  human  life, 
and  oftenest  of  all  through  ignorance.  No  doubt 
each  generation  could  do  far  less  injury  to  those  to 
come  just  as  it  could  to  itself  and  just  as  each  man 
in  it  could  to  himself  No  doubt,  too,  that  the 
future  race  is  less  cared  for  than  present  associates, 
just  as  the  present  satisfaction  is  more  cared  for 
than  an  equal  future  good  to  oneself  But  tlie  fact 
remains  that  the  colossal  blunders  of  burning  cities 
for  spite  or  spreading  the  plague  by  superstitious 
pilgrimages  are  outweighed  by  equally  colossal 
benefactions,  and  that  the  ignorance  surely,  and  the 
indifference  to  remote  humanity  probably,  are  being 
reduced  by  the  very  human  behavior  of  which  they 
are  a  part.  The  constitution  of  things  permits 
enormous  loss  in  satisfaction  here  and  there  through 
behavior,  but  not  in  the  total  account.  If  meliorism 
for  the  human  species  as  a  whole  is  lost,  it  must  be 
by  outside  attacks.  So  far  as  the  behavior  of  the 
species,  from  beginning  to  end,  acts,  it  acts  to 
change  the  world  for  the  better  for  the  species 
as  a  whole. 

It  is  not  within  the  province  of  this  article  to 
measure  the  changes  for  the  better  made  by  human 

in  favor  of  the  negative  except  for  such  greiier.il  tendencies  toward  vigor, 
health,  and  the  like  as  can  be  expected  to  affect  the  gerra-plasni  in  the  same 
way  as  the  body-plasra. 


606    A  SUBSTITUTE   FOR  FREE   WILL 

behavior,  or  those  for  the  better  and  for  the  worse 
made  apart  from  human  behavior,  or  to  ask  how  the 
balance  is  changing  with  the  world's  development 
in  time.  Nor  is  it  relevant  to  this  discussion  to  ask 
how  in  the  past,  present,  or  future  the  sum  of  human 
satisfaction  compares  with  the  sum  of  human  dis- 
comfort. No  one  claims  for  free  will  that  it  makes 
a  positive  balance  of  the  first  sort  or  that  it  needs  a 
positive  balance  of  the  second  sort  as  verification. 
What  free  will  offers  is  the  right  to  believe  that 
human  behavior  may,  so  far  as  it  itself  goes,  possibly 
change  the  world  for  the  better.  What  our  sub- 
stitute for  the  freedom  of  the  wiU  offers  is  the  surety 
that  it  does. 

The  meliorism  which  has  been  sketched  deserves 
the  epithet  "intelligible."  Concerning  it  we  know 
in  general  already  that  it  applies  in  a  measure  to 
many,  possibly  to  all,  animals  ;  that  it  is  a  function, 
not  of  some  mysterious  entity,  the  will,  but  of  in- 
telligence pure  and  simple ;  that  it  varies  in  power 
in  different  human  beings  according  to  their  ability 
to  learn ;  and  that  it  is  not  restricted  to  the  conse- 
quences of  choices  in  great  crises  nor  to  those  made 
after  deliberation  or  with  a  feeling  of  effort  or  with 
acute  consciousness  of  self. 

We  know  further  that  it  is  very  definitely  limited. 
Satisfyingness  and  annoyingness  can  only  select,  not 
create.  For  the  origination  of  mental  variations 
one  must  look,  not  to  the  wants  of  the  creature, 


EDWARD   L.  THORNDIKE  607 

but  to  the  general  constitution  of  tlie  creator,  the 
world  as  a  whole.  The  selection,  too,  is  within  only 
a  limited  field,  that  of  a  fraction  of  our  instinctive 
responses  and  of  the  habits  built  up  thereon. 
Within  these  limits,  however,  our  meliorism  is 
more  than  "  a  doctrine  of  promise."  It  is  a  doctrine 
of  surety.  We  are  not  free  occasionally  to  swerve 
the  future  to  our  wants ;  we  are  forced  always  to 
do  so. 

The  concrete  particulars  of  its  action,  also,  need 
be  in  no  wise  fortuitous  or  unpredictable.  On  the 
contrary,  if  one  knew  perfectly  the  total  physiology 
and  psychology  of  an  animal,  including  the  satisfy- 
ingness  and  annoyingness  of  every  state  of  affairs 
to  it,  he  could  predict  the  modifications  in  its  be- 
havior due  to  our  law  as  surely  as  the  unmodified 
behavior  of  a  hydrogen  atom.  This  meliorism  is 
then  entirely  consistent  with  determinism,  provided 
that  the  world  is  so  determined  that  for  a  neurone 
connection  to  produce  a  satisfying  result  makes  an 
enormous  difference  in  that  connection's  future. 
Tlie  world  may  have  its  every  minutest  item  settled, 
provided  only  that  the  items  are  so  settled  that  in 
certain  organisms  the  habits  of  response  which  sat- 
isfy most  are  most  favored  in  survival.  It  is  con- 
sistent with  indeterminism  too,  as  it  does  not  deny 
that  here  and  there  there  may  be  changes  in  the 
universe  coming  from  nothing,  utterly  lawless,  un- 
accountable, unpredictiible  residua  of  events  to  be 
accepted  but  never  to  be  understood.     It  would  side 


608    A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE   WILL 

with  science  in  general,  however,  in  discouraging 
the  behef  in  such  residua. 

This  mehorism  is  independent  of  any  hypothesis 
concerning  the  interaction  of  mental  events  and 
physical  events.  The  felt  satisfaction  and  discom- 
fort can  be  direct  agencies  to  alter  connections 
between  neurones  or  they  can  be  properties  of 
physiological  features  which  do  the  work  in  some 
such  way  as  I  have  shown. 

This  meliorism  applies  to  thought  as  well  as  to 
conduct.  For  the  word  *'  response  "  anywhere  in 
this  paper,  idea  may  be  substituted  on  the  same 
terms  as  act.  The  beliefs  of  a  man  of  science  or  a 
philosopher  are  selected  in  just  the  same  way  as  the 
movements  of  his  play  at  billiards  or  golf.  The 
immediately  satisfying  to  the  individual,  the  satis- 
fying to  his  entire  life,  the  immediately  satisfying 
to  one  cross-segment  of  the  species  and  the  satisfy- 
ing in  the  long  run  to  the  species  as  a  whole  — 
these  are  the  verae  causae  in  the  development  of 
belief,  reasoning,  and  knowledge.  If  a  system  of 
ideas  is  evolved  which  satisfies  each  perfectly  while 
equally  satisfying  all,  it  is  bound  to  prevail.  It 
may  not  be  the  truth,  but  it  will  be  unanimously 
thought  to  be. 

There  is  a  superstition  amongst  philosophers  that 
human  thinking  is  less  a  part  of  nature  than  human 
action,  that  independence,  creativeness,  and  trans- 
cendency fit  mental  better  than  muscular  behavior. 
Even  those  who  are  distinguished  by  a  sense  for 


ED^YARD   L.  TIIORNDIKE  609 

fact  and  an  appreciation  of  the  natural  history  of 
thinking  do  not  quite  bring  themselves  to  explain- 
ing the  existence  of,  say,  their  own  doctrines  just  as 
they  would  explain  the  existence  of  their  style  of 
playing  golf  Professor  Santayana,  for  example,  has 
not  only  eminent  balance  and  impartiality  in  view- 
ing the  relations  of  human  intelligence  to  the  uni- 
verse but  also  the  dramatic  tiilent  to  vicariously  feel 
as  a  man  of  science,  yet  even  he  makes  thought 
seem  a  producer  in  a  sense  that  movement  is  not, 
and  movement  seem  a  product  in  a  sense  that 
thought  is  not. 

Thought  shows  the  aspect  of  producer  and  hides 
the  aspect  of  product  more  often,  because  more  of 
the  neurones  concerned  are  modifiable  than  of  those 
concerned  with  movement ;  but  neither  is  more 
truly  or  essentially  a  producer  or  product  than  the 
other.  Human  reason  in  selecting  both  ideas  and 
acts  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  same  order  of  nature 
in  which  the  magnet  selects  the  iron  and  the  earth 
its  elliptical  path.  It  is  a  product  of  the  past  and 
a  producer  of  the  future  just  as  is  everything  else. 
Its  value  docs  not  lie  in  its  unnaturalness  or  super- 
naturalness  but  in  the  fact  that  its  productions  are 
in  favor  of  human  satisfaction. 

One  more  cliaracteristic  of  this  meliorism  remains 
that  deserves  at  least  mere  mention.  It  is  a  melior- 
ism of  fact,  observed  to  occur,  neither  requiring  nor 
offering  any  guarantee  transcending  the  guarantee 
of  Xewton's  laws,  tlie  sphericity  of  the  eartli  or  the 

L!9 


610    A  SUBSTITUTE  FOR  FREE   WILL 

reproduction  of  animal  forms  by  fission.  To  assert 
that,  so  far  as  a  man's  own  behavior  goes,  he  betters 
himself,  is  the  same  variety  of  judgment  as  to  say 
that,  so  far  as  the  behavior  of  the  population  of 
Russia  goes,  it  increases  itself. 

The  modifications  in  human  behavior  thus  belong 
to  science  as  truly  as  the  repetitions.  The  history 
of  intellect  and  morals  is  as  "  natural "  as  the  history 
of  the  backbone.  We  can  find  out  how  the  world 
changes  for  the  better  by  the  same  general  methods 
by  which  we  find  that  it  changes  in  the  species  in- 
habiting it.  And  we  may  hope  that  the  influence 
of  science  on  practice  will  here  as  elsewhere  assist 
our  control  of  nature  and  men,  until  the  success  of 
the  physical  sciences  in  making  nature  minister  to 
human  wants  is  equalled  by  the  success  of  the 
mental  sciences  in  making  those  wants  rational  and 
benign. 


The  University  Press,  Cambridge,  U.  S.  A. 


UCLA-College  Library 
B  21  E78 


L  005  686  139  6 


A  A      000  155  390    8 


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